The Grey Templar
by starspawn07
Summary: The first of hopefully a long series of crossover fanfic starring the dark templar Zeratul. Behold: Zeratul vs Alien vs Predator ! Enjoy. Please R & R. update: took care of some inconsistencies.
1. The Derelict

The Grey Templar

By Starspawn07

**Foreword:**

OK, this idea began as a story based on Cassandra Y's "Day of Realisation" ( in the movies - alien/predator section ). Great work Ms Y !

As I tried to make it more original, I hit upon another idea : why not start a series of crossover fanfics starring everyone's favourite dark templar ?

Confused ? Alright, let me elaborate :

Those who have completed the StarCraft: Broodwar campaigns will have read at the end of the story that , "Zeratul and Raynor went their separate ways, never to be heard of again."

Where have the two heroes gone ? Until StarCraft 2 comes out ( if there ever will be a StarCraft 2 ), that is all up to our own imaginations.

Yes, _our_ imaginations. I am going to be busy for a long while ( some years, in fact ), so if some of you feel like it, you can carry on the story for me, in whatever style you like, in whatever universes you choose : Guyver, StarTrek, StarWars, DC or Marvel comics etc.

What will Zeratul encounter on his travels ? Anything is possible.

We can have several writers working on different parts of his journey at the same time.

If anyone of us has the resources, he/she can even start a TV series or such based off it.

That is, _after_ I have finished this first installment, of course.

In fact, this is my first time uploading fanfiction, so I apologize if this does not meet everyone's expectations yet. Plus I am not yet _intimately_ familiar with the Predator universe, so I'll be taking some liberties with my descriptions.

Comments, suggestions or criticisms ( and preferably some follow-ups ) will be appreciated.

By the way, I do not own the characters in my stories, and whatever characters/scenarios I create, you have my permission to write about them any way you want.

**Acknowledgments:**

Director Ridley Scott and co., creators of the Alien.

Swiss Surrealist H.R.Giger, pioneer of the biomechanoid style in art and creature design.

Director John Mctiernan and co., creators of the Predator.

Dark Horse Comics, which started the AvP Franchise.

Electronic games producer Blizzard Entertainment, architect of the Starcraft Universe.

The late H.P. Lovecraft, pioneer of modern horror fiction. ( I just felt like giving my favourite author some credit. Don't worry, there's nothing scary in this story. )

Anyone who has attempted a similar piece of writing before,

And anyone whose original ideas I have directly or indirectly used in this story.

Alright, enough said, on with the story:

**Prologue : The Derelict**

As the pale blue mist subsided a little and the enormous structure gradually came into view, Eya took a long, deep breath, and then exhaled, muttering "Oh boy … ".

The elders were right, it was magnificent. Firtly, it was huge. The whole thing was shaped roughly like a "U", with the two ends pointing diagonally upwards and towering several storeys above the surrounding hills.

As Eya flew his shuttle across the valley and approached it, he could make out more stunning features. The whole exterior of the structure was smooth but drab and tarnished, and riddled with faint, but perfectly straight lines. Even on this world of perpetual darkness, where it is impossible to distinguish colour without the aid of artificial lighting, the pale grey of the Derelict stood out against the dark blue of the rocky landscape around it.

Plating sections, Eya smiled to himself, recalling the architecture lessons he had when he was young.

Past one more hill, and Eya was now close enough to make out the exact shapes of the two ends. They were connected to the middle of the structure by two thick arms that raised them off the ground, bent slightly downwards, each ending in a gigantic knob that was shaped differently from the other. The one now directly above him had horizontal ridges sticking out, as if it housed successive levels of giant platforms inside.

Against the dim moonlight, it looked menacing, almost apocalyptic. Eya quickly lowered his gaze and slowly hovered on towards the entrance of the Derelict, which, the elders told him, was situated between the two gigantic arms.

It was all dark underneath, except for a few points of light. No sign of any strong foundations connecting the structure to the ground. A spaceship, Eya mused.

Eya parked his shuttle just within the Derelict's shadow and stepped further into the darkness.

The entrance was a vertically oriented, oval- shaped hole in the wall, framed by a gentle ridge which ran around the hole and protruded slightly at the two points of the oval. Within it Eya could make out a dark, tubular passageway with wrinkled walls leading to the interior of the Derelict. There was a faint, light coming from the other end.

Eya walked up to the two heavily armed, spear wielding guards standing at either side of the entrance, who saw him coming and immediately crossed their spears to bar the entrance.

"Who are you ? what's your business here ?" The guard on the left hissed through his helmet.

" I am a scientist. My name is Eya. " Eya tugged gently at the white robe he was wearing. " I … uh … am here to participate in some _scientific_ investigations of the Derelict."

"Welcome, Eya. I've been waiting for you." The voice came from within the entrance. There stood a tall man wearing the same kind of white robe as Eya's, only this one's looks greyer and more stained. His features were withered, his tusks held close to his face, suggesting the humble reservation of a person who has seen a lot in his life.

"Hello Kurh."Eya waved and smiled to the older scientist.

The guards lifted their spears, and Kurh turned around, motioning for Eya to go with him, and the both of them walked along the passageway, which stretched for a considerable distance into the heart of the Derelict, and was dimly lit by fluorescent lamps hung from its ceiling.

Occasionally, it would branch off into a separate, smaller tunnel, and when Eya looked into it, he saw the same wrinkled walls, and faint light from the other end, casting eerie silhouettes of frames and blurry moving shapes onto the floor.

Kurh ignored all the side passages, and led Eya straight to the end of the main passage.

What awaited them at the end was a breathtaking sight, and for the second time in the night, Eya blurted out, "Oh boy !"

They were in a large round hall, and this time brightly lit by metre-long oval fluorescent lamps attached halfway up the walls. The wall, Eya noted, curved gently out of the hall from the floor up, then curved in again towards the ceiling. On them were carved intricate , repeating designs that looked oddly organic: ribs, tubercles, smooth balls arranged into neat sections and columns, like rows of silent spectators gazing down at the centre of a huge arena. All the columns ran down the walls, and converged at the centre of the plane floor, where a group of scientists were crowded around a huge artifice of some sort. Eya glanced around. There were other scientists as well, standing at random locations in the hall, some studying the patterns on the walls, some typing away at the computers, some sat or stood still in front of equipments that Eya couldn't quite make out. Everything about the hall looked grey, but on closer inspection, there were hues of beige, pale green or brown.

"Is that the … ?" Eya pointed to the strange monument in the centre.

"Go see for yourself." Kurh said with a smile.

They strolled over to the centre of the hall, squeezed past the crowd, and stopped in front of the "monument".

There was a large, hardened, brownish, tangled mass, about two men tall. On one side, on one side Eya could make out what seemed like the back of a chair, on the other, slouched against the chair, the figure of a strange giant humanoid being wrapped into its seat by strange tubes and sheets. Right in front of this being, covered in similar organic patterns to the wall and floor, was what appeared to be a six man tall, 2 to 3 metre thick telescope pointing diagonally upwards, with all sorts of weird looking knobs, tubes, wires and such equipment jutting out of the end that was facing the strange seated humanoid. Eya noticed a half-metre wide gaping hole in the latter's chest, with rib fragments sticking outwards.

"And that would be …" Eya brought his face close to the hole.

"Yes, this spaceship was once infested with Kainde Amedha. We suspect that there are still some lurking around here." Kurh explained. Then he recalled something else. "There were Pyodhe Amedha as well. We have found some of their remains."

"O ?" Eya raised his brow-ridges in surprise. He was about to ask Kurh to tell him more, when both of them were distracted by a heavy tap on Kurh's shoulder.

They spun around, and came face to face with a tall, imposing figure. He wore a heavy, formidable - looking set of armour and a helmet which covered most of his head, except for the braids sprouting from its back. Another guard, Eya thought.

"You'd better come see this, Kurh." The guard said under his breath, then turned and sped off towards one of the doorways at the foot of the walls. Kurh sighed, then tried his best to catch up to the guard. Eya followed close behind, out of curiosity.

The trio raced through a short passageway and came to a much smaller circular hall than the previous one. Or perhaps it appeared small because it was dark. There was no illumination except for a few spotlights shining onto the floor, where a few scientists were going about their usual business. The room was crisscrossed with frames and ladders. Like in the main hall, columns of the eerie biomechanical designs ran down the walls and converged at the centre of the floor, where there stood a large cylindrical water tank. A particularly bright spotlight made it stand out from its dim surroundings.

The guard, followed by Kurh and Eya, went up and stood in front of the tank.

Eya stared through the its glass walls, and gasped in horror.

Inside was what appeared to be a giant, black emaciated lizard, about three men tall. Along its sleek limbs were joints that would remind one of an oversized crustacean, or a roach. Spikes protruded here and there. Six large blunt ones adorned each side of its back.

Its head was covered in wide, frilled plates. Leathery tubes sprouted from the back. And in front, was a large forehead and heavy brow ridges, under which were two large black eyes, which stared ahead with a blank expression. Under the eyes were four short tusks folded over what appeared to be a mouth. No doubt about it. Though a bit large, that was definitely the face of –

" A Yautja !" Eya exclaimed.

" … crossed with a Kainde Amedha, yes. Somehow, the owners of this spaceship were able to combine the features of the Kainde Amedha and our own species in a certain way so as to create this terrible beast we see here. A frightening thought, though I still fail to see why Zuz called us here with such urgency." Kurh turned towards the guard.

"Just look." Said Zuz, and all of them stared into the water tank for a few more seconds.

And then the creature's fingers began to twitch.


	2. Reflections in the Dark

**Chapter 1 : Reflections in the dark**

"No..." Zeratul gazed in horror at the creature within the glass-walled containment cell. It was recognizably Zerg, yet its Protoss features were also hard to miss.

"Magnificent, isn't it." A deep, reverberating voice.

"What? Who are you?" Zeratul spun round to face the voice.

The dark-skinned human stepped forth from the shadows. He was middle aged and was wearing the usual military uniform of the Terrans. "I've had many names throughout the millennia, young prodigal. You would know me best as Samir Duran." A deep, reverberating voice, and an eerie calmness.

"Kerrigan's consort! Is this part of her twisted schemes?" Zeratul did his best to contain his anger, and failed miserably.

"No. Young Kerrigan could not have engineered this grand experiment. Although her rebirth into the Zerg Swarm has sped up my progress, I can assure you that this endeavor is quite beyond her narrow understanding." Duran explained patiently. Nothing seemed to get to him.

"If you are not her pawn, then what are you?" Zeratul's anger had subsided. In its place was sheer bewilderment.

"I am a servant of a far greater power. A power that has slept for countless ages. And is reflected in the creature within that cell." Duran revealed what he knew, one bit at a time.

"Have you any conception of what you've created here? Do you have any idea what this... this Hybrid is capable of?" Zeratul did not share Duran's patience.

Ah, we are finally getting to the main point, Duran mused. "Of course I do. This creature is the completion of a cycle. It's role in the cosmic order was preordained when the stars were young. Behold the culmination of your history."

Zeratul looked again at the Hybrid, and turned away in disgust. "All I behold is an abomination."

Duran smiled and shook his head. "Your violence, young prodigal, is typical. As is your inablility to comprehend the greater scheme of things. You can destroy all of the specimens here. It will do you no good. For I have seeded the Hybrid on many, many worlds. You will never find them all before they awaken... And when they do... your universe will be changed... forever."

How dare he talk me down ? Zeratul was determined to make sense of things. "Just what are you ?"

"Ah, I could repeat what I said just now, but I think you already know. In fact, you knew what was coming even before you reached this place." With that, Duran walked off into the snowy distance, laughing all the way.

The laughter got louder as the human walked further, until the walls and frames began to crack, and Zeratul looked up just in time to see a huge concrete slab crashing down upon him.

* * *

Zeratul woke up with a start, his heart pounding furiously. He looked around. There was no concrete slab, no steel frames, no containment cell. He was alone, sitting cross-legged on the floor inside a dark cave. A 3 - metre tall tunnel led to the outside. Aside from that, and the water-carved texture of the cave walls, some purple bags lying next to him, a straw bed, and a computer with a lot of peripherals attached to it, covered in a pale gold-coloured metal, there was nothing else. Zeratul rubbed his head. He must have fallen asleep while meditating …

… and then had a vivid dream …

He sighed.

No, not just a dream, for he was reliving a moment that really happened, several months ago. It was an encounter he would never forget. It was the reason he began his present journey, towards the edge of the Koprulu Sector, and beyond, in search of the truth.

Journeying for several months.

He had traveled far from his homeworld. Shaquras was a few star systems away. And Aiur … Aiur had gone up in flames.

It was partly his fault actually. In his haste to strike at the Zerg Swarm, he killed Zasz, one of the Overmind's cerebrates, and at that instance, his mind touched with the singular intelligence of the Zerg, and their secrets were made known to each other.

Thus the Overmind learned of Aiur's location,

and the horde of killer monsters called the Swarm, that marauding band of uncountable biological horrors that struck fear into all other species it encountered, descended upon the beautiful homeworld of the Protoss, and reduced the glorious civilization of the First -born into a desolate landscape of smouldering ruins.

It was then that Tassadar, the former executor of the Protoss fleet, rammed his warship into the Overmind while channeling both the light and dark energies of the Universe into one focused strike, thus succeeding where previous warriors have failed : the annihilation of an entity whose consciousness spanned millions of individual bodies, which could be replaced or multiplied at ease.

Unfortunately, with Tassadar went the secret of this dual channeling.

With the Overmind gone, the remaining Zerg ran amock, and the Overmind's former lieutenants quickly seized control of sections of the Swarm, and drove them to kill all opposing forces, Zerg or Protoss. Aiur was lost.

After leading Protoss refugees to relative safety on the twilight world of Shaquras, homeworld of the long exiled Dark Templar Protoss, Zeratul tried to achieve the incredible state of cosmic power that Tassadar had managed to attain, but to little avail. It did not help that Zeratul was himself a Dark Templar, and had ritually severed his nerve cords, the appendages that allowed a protoss to tap into the common psionic link shared by his or her species.

Since then, the Protoss suffered a few more disastrous, though not fatal setbacks, all of which took a great toll on Zeratul, and he had all but given up on his pursuit of that elusive cosmic power.

Yet that was not the main source of Zeratul's depression. When his mind touched with that of the Overmind, he did learn something for himself. He glimpsed the true intentions of the Xel'Naga.

The Xel'Naga. The much revered Creators.

Countless generations ago, this enigmatic space-faring race came to Aiur and discovered a primitive native species possessing the purity of form: the Protoss, a telepathic species whose individuals shared a common, perfected physical form. They decided to guide this fledgeling species into an advanced technical civilization. But then the impatient First-Born suspected the Xel'Naga of purposedly denying them of advanced technology. They turned on their benefactors, and the resulting conflict drove the Xel'Naga away from Aiur. It would be several generations before the Protoss rediscovered and re-embraced their Xel'Naga heritage.

The Xel'Naga then came upon the world of Zeurus. Believing that the Protoss were a flawed product,the Xel'Naga now chose instead, to create a new species possessing the purity of essence. Thus was born the Zerg, a species with a single mind, capable of assimilating other species into itself.

That was not the end. The Xel'Naga's final experiment in the Koprolu sector, it turned out, was to combine the Protoss and Zerg into a single, perfected species. From the Overmind's point of view, that could be done by assimilating the First – Born, and anything that stood in its path, into the Zerg Swarm.

Noone was sure where the Xel'Naga were throughout the ensuing conflict. Were they watching events unfold ? Had they left for a different part of the Universe ? Or, were they secretly creating Hybrids of their own ?

Duran was right. Zeratul knew what was coming.

The Dark Templar shrugged, history was history. What's done could not be undone. He had given his people ample warning. Their fate was now their own.

Now that he was alone, and in a place far removed from the wars raging in the Koprulu sector, he could put aside the Hybrid incident for a while, and concentrate on that other passion of his, something that he had not attempted for a long while.

He drew a deep breath and slowly raised his arms in a circle, bringing his hands close to each other. The moment they touched, a faintly glowing orange mist condensed out of the air and began swirling around him. The orange glow in his eyes grew, until they appeared like the shining headlights of a tiny vehicle.

Gradually, some of the orange mist evaporated away and was replaced by a faintly glowing blue mist. The glow in his eyes started to dim.

The two mists danced and drifted around Zeratul for a few more seconds, then faded away completely.

He lowered his arms and sighed. This was hopeless. He was a Dark Templar. He drew his powers from the cold Void. For half his life, he had come to rely on the forces of entropy to fuel his abilities. Now, as he tried to summon the energies of life and light wielded by his High Templar brethren, he found that the two opposing energies would cancel each other out, leaving him with an awful feeling of powerlessness.

Damn Tassadar for dying so early.

Zeratul shook his head and stood up. Blame is pointless when you are alone. He relaxed his limbs and slowly lowered himself into a posture that he had repeated many times these few months. Slowly, he turned and swayed in a series of graceful movements.

Zeratul's human friend, Raynor, taught him the old Terran disciplines of Tai-Gik and Yoga before they parted ways.

"I hope that helps in harmonizing your energies !" so Raynor said. "Who knows, given your mystical training and stuff, they might even work better on a Protoss than on a human. Good luck and may the force … um … Adun be with you ! haha … "

Zeratul had found the practice to be rather rejuvenating. It dispelled his stress, and recently, much to his surprise, he found that his psionic appendages were starting to regrow, bit by bit, and he discovered some abilities that he thought he had lost forever since youth … since he cropped his nerve cords.

Still, he had yet to achieve his ultimate goal.

There was something Raynor said, something about the philosophies behind Tai-Gik and Yoga, that Zeratul could not quite recall at this moment.

Suddenly, he froze. He sensed something. Something approaching his cave.

Strange, he had thought this planet was uninhabited.

How was he discovered anyway ?

He thought about his cosair parked at the entrance to the cave. It was too large to fit through the tunnel and be brought into the cave, so he had made sure that it was completely cloaked.

Then it hit him: It rained that afternoon.

He smacked his own face and cursed his own absent-mindedness.

No matter how invisible a four metre tall flying vehicle appeared when cloaked, once it started accumulating water or debris all over its surface, it could be picked out from miles away.

It was very close now, but its psionic emanations were still a blur. An it, or a they ?

Soon, long shadows of numerous thin, quadrupedal figures appeared at the inner end of the tunnel, cast against the dim white light from the outside.

Ah, a they.


	3. An Audience with the Queen

**Chapter 2 : An Audience with the Queen**

A sleek black shape leapt from the tunnel into the cave, and halted for a moment at the cave centre.

Friend or foe ? Zeratul backed up against the cave wall, and slowly tried to inch his way out of sight, all the time keeping an eye on the creature, trying to get a clear image of what it looked like amidst the darkness of the cave.

It was roughly five metres long and resembled a giant black, emaciated lizard with long thin limbs. It walked with an erect gait. At the tip of its long whip-like tail was what appeared to be a spike shaped like a spearhead.

Four blunt spikes protruded from its back, each three-quarters metre long and around ten centimeters thick. It had a large, smooth, elongated skull, which curved gently downwards towards the back.

Not a very friendly looking silhouette.

Zeratul clutched his warp-blade tightly.

The Xenomorph sniffed the ground and the air. There was definitely something in here. It raised its head and gave a low metallic screech. Two more Xenomorphs strolled into the cave from the tunnel. They began rummaging through the bags and hardware scattered on the floor.

"What do you want ?"

The three creatures propped up their heads with a start and looked around the cave for the source of the telepathic message, in a fashion that reminded Zeratul of an insect checking out its surroundings.

They spotted the lone figure leaning against the wall at the far end of the cave. It was roughly humanoid, though slightly taller than a Yautja and definitely taller than an Ooman.. Its skin was pale grey and it was wearing a brown tattered shirt and kilt. It had long legs with digitigrade feet, and almost equally long arms with powerful-looking hands, one of which was clutching a strange looking, half-metre long cylinder.

No matter, the Xenomorphs thought to themselves, whatever it was, this being did not look capable of defending itself against the likes of them. They could easily capture it and bring it back to the Hive for impregnation.

Slowly, they turned and approached the humanoid on two legs, ready to lunge at it at the most opportune moment.

Zeratul tried telepathically to tell the creatures to back off, but this time they ignored him. He sensed a greater intelligence commanding them, telling them to advance and go ahead with the kill. Were they Zerg ? Had the agents of the Swarm caught up with him ? No, not likely, the former Swarm was no more. Kerrigan was now supreme ruler of the Zerg, and the Queen of Blades had decided to let him go. That was, after that final tragic incident on Char.

The Xenomorphs were now a few metres away from him. They had him cornered. Zeratul widened and lowered his stance, and held out his arms. Whatever the creatures threw at him, he must be ready.

Suddenly, what appeared to be a hair thin, straight thread of light emerged from the top end of the cylinder that Zeratul was holding, and immediately stretched a full two metres into the air. Its translucent , ethereal blue surface rippled as Zeratul waved it throught the air, and its thin core glowed bright white.

The ignited warp blade startled the Xenomorphs and they hesitated for a few seconds, but they were determined. The one on Zeratul's left snarled and dashed towards Zeratul in a one giant leap, teeth bared and arms stretched forward, ready to knock its prey over and incapacitate him, but it was not fast enough.

Zeratul jumped three to four metres in the air, just as the charging Xenomorph reached his previous position, the spikes on its back brushing past harmlessly under him. Without a second thought, Zeratul quickly brought his upraised warp-blade down in a wide arc, slashing through the Xenomorph's hip.

The latter crashed several metres forward and onto the ground, roaring in pain.

Pale green fluid gushed out from the wide, deep gash across its back and hip and spilled onto the floor, where it smoked and sizzled, creating a few shallow portholes here and there. Acidic blood, Zeratul thought. And before then he thought the Zerg were the most noxious creatures.

While Zeratul marveled at the incredible physiology of the injured Xenomorph, he didn't realize that its partner, standing on his right before the attack, had jumped onto the wall as well, and was now crawling down from behind him.

Before he realized it, the stalker had leapt down on him, pushing him all the way down onto the floor in an instant. It pinned him, face down and spread-eagled, onto the ground, closing its long black, clawed fingers around each of his limbs.

"Unhand me !" Zeratul shouted telepathically, but instead of complying with him, the Xenomorph tightened its vice-like grip. Zeratul squirmed.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the third Xenomorph approaching from the front. He needed to do something drastic, quick.

Drawing a deep breath, Zeratul sent streams of raw energy coursing through his body. It crackled, and sparked, expanded outward through his skin and coalesced in a smooth hollow sphere around him.

The Xenomorph felt a tingling sensation in its skin, on the areas facing its immobilized prey. This quickly turned into a violent scalding, accompanied by wiffs of smoke and a sickening crackle. It screamed and shook in both shock and pain as Zeratul's plasma shield burnt through its skin and into the flesh beneath. It began to loosen its grip on Zeratul.

Now, thought Zeratul. He bent his legs and kicked forward with all his strength, flipping himself into a handstand posture. This threw the Xenomorph off his back and sent it tumbling forward, crashing into the other Xenomorph that was approaching from the front. The two creatures rolled a several metres onwards and then collapsed on the floor. The plasma electrocuted one was screeching and shuddering in pain, while the other got up slowly and started off towards Zeratul, who had flipped back into his battle-ready posture and was panting from mild exhaustion.

Damn, they never give up.

This last Xenomorph appeared more cautious. It had seen what Zeratul was capable of. It needed a plan. It stopped about six metres away from the Dark Templar, and the both of them stared at each other for a moment.

Then Zeratul held his warp-blade close to his body, and concentrated hard. Parts of his body turned translucent, and his whole physical form began to waver and break up. To an outside observer, it was as if the latter were seeing Zeratul through a water surface with a lot of ripples. In an instant, Zeratul seemed to vanish. He had bent all visible light around himself, except for a few unnoticeable beams that he used to see his surroundings.

The Xenomorph stood in its place, not moving an inch. Was it baffled by Zeratul's cloaking technique ? Was it wondering where he had gone ?

Zeratul slowly walked over to the creature, taking the time to observe the details of the Xenomorph's anatomy. It was black all over, with hues of grey in regular patterns. Its ribs and vertebrae jutted out beneath its leathery skin, giving the whole creature an emaciated appearance, and making the tail look segmented. Its joints were arthropod in nature, suggesting a partial exoskeleton. Its head was smooth and elongated, like an oversized one-metre long bean covered in black oil. In fact, it had very few facial features aside from its menacing wolf-like jaws, which were also black and grey all over. There were no eyes.

No eyes. Damn.

A chill ran down Zeratul's spine. When he was cloaked, no one could see him, but he must rely on his cape to mask all the sensory signals that could give away his position : heat, smell, sound etc. Yet, it so happened that he was not wearing it now. That precious grey sheet of specially manufactured fabric was neatly folded in his bag, at the far end of the cave.

So much for being a master of stealth, he thought, as the Xenomorph leapt towards him with a triumphant roar.

Before he could react, the creature's face was mere centimeters from his own, its jaws wide open, revealing another set of similar but smaller jaws within, which telescoped forwards at an alarming rate. It hit Zeratul's forehead with the force of a hammer falling from a few feet above, but failed to kill him as he managed to jerk himself backwards at the last moment.

Then something struck his neck from behind, and everything went black.

* * *

"Damn you, Kerrigan, for what I must do!" Zeratul ran towards the containment cell, and with one horizontal slash of his warp blade, shattered its glass walls.

The cell's occupant collapsed to the ground. She looked up to Zeratul with a pleasant, but feeble smile. There was a deep gash across her chest, and a thick blue mist was pouring out from the wound. "Thank you, Zeratul ... You have freed me from her vile control at last. You have always served me with honor... Thus I must ask you... to watch over my tribe... Into your hands I give the future…"

Zeratul held Raszagal's lifeless body in his arms. His cries of despair echoed across the fiery mountains of the hellish world of Char.

"I can hardly believe this! You've killed your own Matriarch!" The human-Zerg hybrid standing next to them teased, incredulous yet at the same time amused.

"Better that I killed her, than let her live as your slave, Kerrigan." Zeratul looked intently at Raszagal's face. Lifeless, but at peace.

"Well, I have misjudged you, warrior. You are worthy, indeed. You are free to go."

"What?" Zeratul started. Had Kerrigan lost that much of her sanity ?

"I said, you are free to go. I've already taken your honor. I'll let you live, because I know that from now on, your every waking moment will be torture. You'll never be able to forgive yourself for what I've forced you to do. And that, Zeratul, is a better revenge than I could have ever dreamed of." Kerrigan's purpose was insane, but her methods were calculated.

"You will regret this decision, Kerrigan. We shall meet again." Zeratul threatened, as bright blue ripples of light swirled around him. When they had completely enveloped him, he lost all sense of time and space …

* * *

The Xenomorph Queen looked down at the unconscious humanoid figure that lay before her.

He had no mouth, she noted. In fact, it seemed this mysterious being had no gullet at all. He lacked many of the organs or internal body cavities that the Yautja or Oomans possessed. He was nothing more than a grey, leathery and scaly skin wrapped around a large, formidable-looking humanoid frame, with four digits ( two opposable ones ) on each hand or feet. In his right hand was a strange, segmented, half-metre long, five centimeter wide cylinder, tied to his wrist with a purple string. There were two large eyes on his long triangular face, and short, thin tubular appendages sprouting from the back of his head.

Attempts to implant a Xenomorph embryo into him had failed. He seemed to possess an alarmingly efficient immune system. The embryo was not developing fast enough, she surmised, before it was killed off by his immune cells.

Usually, if a captive was of no practical use to the Hive, the Queen would have it killed, but this time, curiosity got the better of her, and she let him live.

She sat back and pondered what else she could do with him.

At that moment, the humanoid's eyes flicked open, and emitted a shocking bright orange glow.

Another nightmare recollection, Zeratul thought as he opened his eyes and came back to the present reality. He could remember vividly that scene in which Raszagal died. In fact, it happened _before_ his encounter with Duran. Isolation from home must have caused him to mess up the chronological order of events that happened back then.

There was little light. Zeratul stared at the ceiling of the cave. A different cave, Zeratul could tell. His own cave was formed from hydraulic action. This one looked like it was carved out artificially with rocks and pebbles. There were also some deep troughs here and there that he could not make sense of.

Zeratul sat up and looked around him, and gasped in horror.

He was surrounded by Xenomorphs. There was a big crowd of them scattered about the huge cave : on rocky the floor, on the walls, a few hanging upside down from the ceiling, and a few sitting at large holes in the wall which, Zeratul surmised, were tunnels leading into other cave chambers occupied by the Xenomorphs. A dim blue light shone in from one of the holes. Daylight.

They were all facing him, but kept a distance of at least six metres from him, as if they were afraid of him. Among them, standing exactly six metres from him, was one large xenomorph, several times the size of the rest, with an extra pair of arms that grew from behind its shoulders and six, rather than four, spikes on its back. The back of its elongated head widened and ended in a huge, frilled shield. Large white fangs erupted from within its mouth. It appeared to have eyes, but in the darkness noone could be sure.

Zeratul gazed in awe at the Xenomorph Queen. Is that their cerebrate ?

Well, there's always an easy way to find out. "What are you ? What do you want with me ?"

The Queen jerked her massive head backwards, surprised that the humanoid was able to talk to her telepathically.

"I am the Queen of this Hive. These are my children, and you are my prisoner."

These creatures were different from the Zerg, he could sense it. A Zerg brood shared a single intelligence. The Overlords and Cerebrates manipulated the movements of their minions as if the latter's bodies were their own.

That was not the case for this, Hive. Each Xenomorph had a consciousness of its own. Only that it was born with an inclination to serve its progenitor, its Queen.

Still, they could be related to the Zerg, or the Xel'Naga, or the Hybrids …

Zeratul probed deeper into the Queen's mind, and hit a wall. She was resisting.

And she did not like what Zeratul was trying to do.

The Xenomorphs screeched angrily at him, and approached him slowly, teeth bared.

Trouble, Zeratul thought. He stood up and looked around him again. So many of them. Even a Dark Templar of his power couldn't possibly take down all of them before they overwhelmed him.

Then again, there's the Queen. Zeratul smiled. He knew what to do. He had tried something similar before. Granted, the Queen did not control her children in the same way that Zasz did its minions, but if he tried hard enough, he might be able to do _something._ Plus, if he failed, the Queen would probably tear him up and gobble him up in an instant, and he would be off to see the Matriarch in no time. Not a bad choice either.

Concentrating hard, he raised his plasma shield, and cloaked himself. Being optically invisible might not conceal him from the Xenomorphs, but if the Queen did have eyes, this might confuse her for a while.

The Xenomorphs had completely surrounded him now. A few steps closer and they would all be leaping on top of him.

Zeratul faced the Queen, ignited his warp blade, and charged.


	4. Duel

**Chapter 3: Duel**

The shimmering, transparent figure dashed through the lines of Xenomorph drones towards the Queen, slashing wildly with a two metre long thread of light. Those drones that got too close to it without having a limb or two cut off, had their upper bodies burnt and repulsed by an invisible energy barrier. The air was thick with smoke, dust and acid blood splashing about, amidst loud crackling and sizzling and the cries and screams of heavily injured Xenomorphs.

Zeratul was not holding back now. He had been careless back in his cave, and had avoided killing the three Xenomorphs, but now the Hive felt the full fury of the Dark Templar.

With all his strength, he jumped up and forward, landing right on top of the Queen's head. The latter growled in frustration, and shook violently, trying to dislodge him, but Zeratul held on. She then brought the end of her tail upwards, hoping to impale him with her spearhead shaped tail spike, but he simply caught it by its tip and slashed it off with his warp blade. The Queen roared in pain.

The fierce orange glow in Zeratul's eyes now became more intense, and a ball of red mist coalesced in the palm of his left hand. Its core glowed white hot.

Saying a prayer to Adun, Zeratul swung his left hand downwards, and slammed the energy ball into what he hoped was the Queen's brain.

There was a flash of blinding white and orange light, accompanied by a loud hum that drowned out all sounds in the cave.

Then darkness returned and everything fell silent.

Ah, Silence. It worked. Zeratul sat down on the head, and heaved a sigh of relief. The glow in his eyes faded into a barely noticeable dim orange. He had used up most of his energies, but it had achieved the desired effect. All around him, like statues, stood the Xenomorphs, immobilized by the sudden whiplash of psionic energies that shot out from their Queen and struck them through the telepathic link that they shared with her.

The Queen, in particular, took the full brunt of the Maelstrom attack, and had collapsed onto the ground. Ripples of bright orange glow flowed over her, like the kind seen on burning paper once the flames have disappeared.

Zeratul patted the Queen's head. " Worry not, milady. This paralysis will wear off in a few days, and you can go back to your daily life."

Now, all I need to do is head out, look for a cave with a weird sheet of water suspended in midair near its entrance, and get a good sleep, Zeratul thought as he stood up and staggered towards that hole in the wall through which a dim blue light shone into the cave.

l...

The sky was dim and overcast. There was a faint red glow in the horizon. The last sun was setting.

Hidden amongst the undergrowth, Urte observed the tall figure emerging from the hole in the cliff, with both a sense of admiration and overwhelming excitement.

Incredible, he thought. To be able to escape from not just a few Kainde Amedha, but a whole Hive of them, with not so much as a visible scratch. This must certainly be a powerful being. What a great honour it must be, to test my hunting skills against this awesome creature.

Yet, judging from its gait, it is probably exhausted from the last battle.

It is dishonourable to attack a warrior in his weakened state.

Let him rest for the night.

Tomorrow would be an exciting day.

With that, Urte turned and trodded back into the jungle depths.

l...

Zeratul wrapped his turban around his head. It covered his whole head and draped down over his neck, leaving only a horizontal patch across the middle of his face, exposing his eyes.

Then he put on his cape and wound it loosely around his shoulder to form a kind of mantle. The grey - coloured fabric of which the turban and cape were made of was specially engineered to absorb and damp all heat, sound and odour from its surroundings, including its wearer.

He glanced around. Yes, the portholes made by the Xenomorph's acid blood was still there, close to the wall. He had put the Hive under paralysis, so he doubted that any more Xenomorphs would come after him today, but he was not going to take any chances.

No nightmare flashbacks last night, as far as could Zeratul recall. His encounter with those creatures must have overshadowed whatever trauma he had from past events. For the moment that was.

He had a nagging hunch that the Xenomorphs were somehow connected to the Xel'Naga and the Hybrid incident – that familiar sense of being perfectly designed for combat and killing, an unsettling vibe that he had felt when fighting the Zerg.

Still, a hunch was just a hunch. The Queen of the Hive kept her secrets well, and he was unable to glean any information about their origins from her mind.

He stood up and walked out through the tunnel. A strong, cool breeze swept over him as he stepped into the outside.

The sky was a dim grey, with thick, rolling clouds all over. Beams of pure white light shone through here and there. The first sun had risen hours ago.

Towards each side of the cave entrance was a field of grass-like plants, a few metres wide which gradually thickened into a bush, and then a dense jungle of towering tree-like clubmosses, ferns and horsetails.

In the middle was a wide trail, which widened into a vast, grey, sandy plain in the distance, dotted with huge black jutting rocks.

Zeratul could make out the dark outline of cliffs and hills in the distance.

Zeratul faced the brightest beam of light in the sky, raised his arms and Saluted the Sun.

His people had long evolved past the need to consume solid food. They drew sustenance from the air, water and ambient energy around them.

Suddenly, he froze in mid-stance. He sensed something again. Like the last time this was a blur, but he could tell that this one was still.

And it seemed to come from a few metres behind him.

Zeratul leapt immediately to his left as what appeared to be a long, black spear shot out from somewhere in the Jungle behind him and grazed the side of his lower right thigh.

He spun around to face that jungle, which was the one to the left of the cave entrance.

Noone there. Or rather, he could not _see_ any thing besides shrubs and trees, but he felt a strong presence.

He bent down to examine the cut made by the flying spear. It merely stung, and was not very deep. He looked at the spear now firmly driven diagonally into the ground. It was black and smooth and segmented, covered in intricate designs. What little of the spearhead that had not been buried in the ground by the force of the shot revealed a sharp, precisely crafted blade.

Had the thrower gotten his or her angle right, Zeratul might have lost his leg.

Zeratul unwound his cape from his shoulder and let it cover his whole body, then concentrated hard.

Urte gasped in shock as the tall figure disappeared from every sensor display in his helmet visor. He frantically switched vision modes and stopped at electronic vision. Ah, yes, the tall, pale green silhouette of the mysterious humanoid creature was there, contrasting sharply with dark green surroundings.

And it had run up right in front of him !

Urte immediately bent backwards and leapt three metres back, landing on his buttocks, as the humanoid figure delivered a series of powerful kicks in his direction. He quickly turned over, dove through the bushes and ran for the nearest tree he could find.

Zeratul brought his feet down and blinked. He had not hit anything.

Then he saw the thick fern bushes in front of him shake violently for two seconds, swaying and parting in the most unnatural angles.

And then he heard some faint thuds coming from within the dark depths of the jungle.

There was the soft sound of someone tugging at the branches of a tree, and someone crashing through leaves and vines in the distance.

Great, I lost it, he sighed. Whatever it was, it would probably come back later and try to catch me off guard, he thought, as he slowly raised his plasma shield.

Just as he was about to turn back and examine the strange spear, out of the corner of his eye he saw a black, elliptical object the size of a dinner plate darting towards his face from somewhere to his right.

He jerked his head backwards and winced as the object hit an invisible barrier a few centimetres away from his face. It sparked and sizzled for a few milliseconds and was repulsed away from him, landing three metres from him on the ground.

The force of the strike sent Zeratul staggering a few steps backwards, and before he knew it, the strange black disc somehow lifted itself from the ground and flew at him again, heading straight for his knees. It was stopped a few centimeters away from his knees by the invisible barrier, and repulsed again, sparks flying and hissing from where it hit.

The force of the impact knocked Zeratul off his balance, and he pushed forward with his hands to stop himself from falling flat on his face.

And then the disc disappeared back into the Jungle.

Zeratul stood up and looked around. Whoever threw that disc at him must have realized that its momentum was not enough for it to penetrate his plasma shield, and so recalled it back, however he or she did that.

Good, he thought, he must have given up by now.

He turned back towards the clearing between the two jungles. He could see that the spear had disappeared now. In its place was a deep trough roughly over ten centimeters long at the surface and possibly extending a feet more into the ground. Around it was a messy set of wide, four-digit footprints. Those were Zeratul's.

There was also another line of what looked like bootprints, slightly deeper and narrower than Zeratul's own, leading from somewhere in the jungle, towards and past that trough in the ground, and round and about in a smooth circle, till it reached all the way …

… behind him.

The Dark Templar spun around just in time to feel something push right through his plasma shield from the front.

Instinctively, he stepped to his left and turned right in a fluid, quarter-circle, and felt a sharp edge slice across the skin of his belly, followed by a searing pain. It was the spear.

Immediately he gripped the invisible pole of the spear with his right hand and brought his left arm up in one swift motion, turning the other end of the spear clockwise towards his right.

This pushed the spear upwards and away from its invisible wielder.

Then Zeratul swung the spear horizontally in a wide arc at chest level back at his invisible assailant .

There was a loud thud accompanied by the sound of splintering glass and metal.

Urte staggered a few feet backwards, his mind reeling from the violent blow he just received to his head, and the fact that he just had his weapon yanked off his hands. His helmet had absorbed the impact, so he was not injured, but his visor had been damaged, and he could not see his opponent clearly. That, and he wondered if his cloaking mechanism was still working properly. No time to worry, he thought, as he detached the ball of thin wires. Skillfully and wiftly he he untied certain knots on it and threw it forward.

Zeratul had just thrown down the spear, its invisibility dispelled as it lost contact with its original wielder, and looked up in time to see a mass of thin, grey wires flying towards him. The wires untangled themselves in mid-air, and expanded into a huge, four-metre wide net with strange, tiny black balls attached to its sides. Before Zeratul could react, the net wrapped itself tightly around him, pressing his legs together and his arms close to his body. The momentum of the flying net knocked him over to the ground. There was a series of clicking sounds, and the strange balls seemed to attach themselves firmly onto those other parts of the net that they came into contact with. The more Zeratul struggled, the more the net tightened itself. He turned his hand and tried to reach for the warp blade that was tied to his right wrist.

Urte pressed a button under the chin of his helmet, and steam hissed out from underneath it. He then lifted it off his head, took a deep breath of the fresh, damp air, and stepped forward to inspect his catch.

Before him, was his wire net, wrapped around an invisible, vaguely humanoid form lying on the ground. It was roughly three metres long. Success, Urte clicked his tusks with joy.

Suddenly, a thin, straight, white thread of light emerged from the side of what appeared to be the humanoid's waist, and stretched two metres into the air. Its translucent blue surface rippled in the breeze. It was waved about randomly, cutting through the wires of the net.

As Urte looked on stunned and confused, the wielder of the strange glowing sword threw a section of the net at his face. He instinctly held up an arm to ward it off, and felt something blunt hit his chest with tremendous force. He fell backwards from the blow and landed on his back, sliding on for a metre or two.

He lay motionless for a few seconds, dazed, then turned his head to see, against the dim grey daylight, a dark, imposing, formidable-looking figure standing beside him. There was a fiery orange glow in its eyes.

* * *

That's all for now. I hope you enjoyed the story so far. 

I'll upload the next few Chapters soon.

As I said before, all comments, suggestions, criticisms will be appreciated.

- Starspawn07 )


	5. Jungle 2 Jungle

**Chapter 4 : Jungle 2 Jungle**

Zeratul glared down at the figure lying at his feet, and focusing his thoughts, blasted a dire telepathic message into its mind.

"You have two choices. Either you tell me who you are and the reason you attacked me, or I rip it from your mind, and I cannot guarantee that I can leave your mind intact after doing the latter."

To Zeratul, this was a simple interrogation, a natural response to a stranger who tried to spear him, cut him with a flying disc, sneak up on him while cloaked, ensnare him with a net weaved from wires and most unforgivable of all, interrupting his morning exercise in the process, but it seemed to have a "Boo !" effect on the recipient, as the latter shuddered and stared back wide-eyed at the dark templar for a few seconds, not speaking a word.

It seemed totally spooked by Zeratul's ability to relay his thoughts directly into its mind.

Zeratul took the time to study its features. He estimated its standing height to be slightly shorter than his own. It was wearing a suit of thick body armour consisting of dull grey metallic plates, bands, guards and greaves with rounded, blunt edges, connected at the joints by a black leathery elastic material, all shaped and assembled to precisely cover a stocky humanoid frame while allowing for maximum mobility of the waist and limbs.

At the moment it was not wearing any protective headgear.

It had a large forehead and heavy brow-ridges, below which were a pair of deep set eyes, with round, yellow irises and beady black pupils. Below the eyes were a set of what looked like four tusk-like mandibles with skin flap connecting their bases, folded over a smaller mouth at the centre filled with sharp conical teeth.

Its skin was leathery and pale green in colour, with darker pigment spots clustered in patterns corresponding to faint ridges and bumps arranged symmetrically on the top of its head. From the back and sides of its head, there sprouted long, smooth, flexible and black tubular structures which tapered at their ends and were roughly three centimeters thick each. Were those nerve cords ? If the creature were born with the potential for psionics, it had never developed nor used them, as could be inferred from its reaction to Zeratul's telepathic question.

"My name is Urte." The creature finally organized its thoughts. " I am a hunter."

"And I suppose you came here to hunt me then." Zeratul narrowed his eyes, keeping a stern glare on Urte. He pointed his warp blade at Urte's throat.

"No, I came here to hunt the Kainde Amedha." Urte replied. "By killing one, I earn the right to be Blooded. A great honour, that can be attained only by proving one's combat and hunting skills against a powerful creature.

And then I saw you. I spied you fighting against three Kainde Amedha drones. I observed you being dragged into their Hive, and I saw you emerge from its entrance after causing a great commotion in there. No warrior has ever been able to go up against a whole Hive of Kainde Amedha with such simplistic weapons as yours and escape unscathed.

It has been a great honour to be able to challenge you to single combat.

I die with no regrets."

"I will not kill you yet. Get up." Zeratul said as he turned off his warp blade.

Urte watched in amazement as the translucent blue surface of the blade broke up and dissipated away, while its thin bright white core narrowed and then vanished into thin air.

Incredible, a blade of pure energy, Urte thought, no wonder it was able to cut through a whole crowd of Kainde Amedha without getting corroded by their acid blood.

"Those creatures you call the Kainde Amedha. Tell me more about them." Zeratul asked as Urte slowly stood up and started picking up his helmet, spear and broken net from the ground.

Urte thought for a moment before replying. "I know very little beyond the fact that they are considered by the elders as the most formidable prey or opponent the Yautja have ever known, aside from the Oomans. They are very agile, deadly and adaptive. They capture other creatures and use them as hosts in which they implant the embryos of their young. A host infected this way dies once the young Kainde Amedha has developed into a certain stage and breaks out through the host's chest."

At this Zeratul froze and raised his brow-ridges.

"Don't worry." Urte chuckled. "I had scanned you with my visor. I didn't find anything looking even remotely like an endoparasite lodged in your body. Though I wonder why. Can you take off that face-scarf of yours ?"

Zeratul nodded and unwound the cloth of his turban from his face.

"Whoa ! What are you ?"Urte exclaimed. This being standing before him had no mouth ! There were a pair of large glowing eyes across the middle of its face, some faint purple coloured patterns on the pale grey, scaly, leathery skin and some shallow slits along its cheeks. Some wide ridged plates on the top of its head. Short brown flexible tubular structures sprouting from the back of its head. No mouth.

"I am Zeratul." The dark templar replied. After a second, he added, "Former Prelate of the Dark Templar." Then he realized that did not account for his appearance. "I am from a faraway star system. My species is called the Protoss."

"An honour to have met you, Zeratul. About the Kainde Amedha, that was about all I know."Urte said. Then he remembered something. "There is a friend of mind. He is a scientist. Lately he has been studying these creatures. He might know more about the Kainde Amedha : their physiology in detail, their origins … all that stuff. However, to find him, we would probably have to travel to my home planet. That is a long way from here, and the Mothership is not scheduled to return there yet, not until all the hunters who have been sent onto this planet have completed their trials of skill."

"That might not be a problem." Zeratul smiled. "While you were spying at the entrance to my cave last evening, did you notice some sheets of water suspended in mid-air ?"

"Yes, I did. Your spacecraft ?"

Both of them looked towards the cave entrance. The water had all evaporated now. Noone could tell at that instant that there was an invisible flying vehicle parked outside it.

Zeratul walked towards the left side of the cave entrance, and stopped seven metres away from it. Then he raised his left hand to chest level and pushed forward with it. Faint blue glowing bands rippled out from the sides of his hands into the air around it and expanded across a flat invisible surface, then curved forward to cover a large unseen object situated between Zeratul's hand and the side of the cave entrance.

Then the object slowly materialized within that space, and Urte's eyes widened in awe.

The craft had smooth, dark gold plating with hues of brown and faint patterns of black lines etched here and there.

It resembled a gigantic, elegant bird with a pair of thick wings, rounded at their edges, swept forwards and slightly downwards. Two large oval pale-blue translucent crystals were encrusted into the forward tips of the wings in such a way that they were horizontally oriented and the crystal on one wing faced that on the other.

Between the two wings was the smaller body of the craft, the roof of which was covered with thick, ridged overlapping symmetrical plates. Along the latter's sides were smaller plates, and rows of slanted, rib-like structures beneath them. At the front of the body was what appeared to be a windscreen, shaped like a gently bulging, forward facing lense two metres wide, partially obscured by the roof-plates. A four metre long spike protruded forwards from underneath the body and bent slightly upwards. If extended, the spike and and the forward tips of the wings looked like they would converge at a point in front of the craft.

At the back of the body were a few large, shallow tubes and some small blue crystals arranged symmetrically.

"The Dark Templar Corsair, model 129-Kakkaru," Zeratul continued. "Designed for high speed aerial or inter-space combat. This one has the latest in minituarised warp –drive technology installed into it, and is plated with a metamaterial to facilitate cloaking." He ran his hands slowly along the upper surface of a wing.

"I think there is capacity for a few persons of our size." Zeratul pressed a tiny button at the bottom of his warp-blade hilt. There was a soft beep, and then a few adjacent plates on the side of the Corsair's body that was facing Zeratul and Urte slid apart from each other to reveal the dark cockpit and passenger space of the Corsair, which was lined with a dark blue mat. Zeratul climbed inside and settled into his pilot seat, then beckoned for Urte to follow.

Urte complied and sat down comfortably behind Zeratul, looking around at the intricate patterns and strange equipments installed into the inner walls of the Corsair.

"Do you have a way to pinpoint the location of your home planet ?" Zeratul asked as he switched on the control panel, filling the cockpit with an eerie blue glow.

"Of course. I can even give you the coordinates of the landing spot."Urte opened a small plate on the wrist of the gauntlet he wore on his left hand. Immediately a realistic hologram depicting a few star systems appeared in the air above it. It quickly zoomed in on one of the systems, then on a planet within it.

Zeratul turned to look at it. The planet was covered mostly in blue-grey seas, with strips of dark green, brown and black land concentrated along its equator. On a particular spot within a strip of land, there was a tiny red, flashing dot. Paper thin layers of white mist wrapped around the planet.

As he studied the hologram intently, memories of Aiur as it was before being ravaged by the Zerg flashed through his mind, but he shrugged them off and turned back to his controls.

"All right, Urte, hold on tight. Warp travel can be a little bit unsettling at first."

The two blue crystals on the Corsairs wings as well as those at its back began to glow intently. There was a low, steady hum, and a ball of white light coalesced behind the craft as it slowly lifted itself off the ground. Then the ascent increased in speed, sending the Corsair right through the thick rolling clouds and into the outer atmosphere. The blackness of space stretched above them towards the horizon.

Bright, pale blue ripples of light swirled around the craft. They gradually enveloped it entirely. The ball of white light behind the Corsair increased dramatically in intensity and the Corsair dashed forward in a flash, vanishing into deep space.

……

A crowd gathered at the platform to watch the strange little craft drop through the clouds high above them and then approach in their direction, landing at the edge platform. They gazed in wonder at its weird design and golden plating, and leapt back in surprise as some of the plates on its upper side slid apart, and two figures emerged from within.

The air was warm and humid. It was all dark, except for the dim blue glow from the sky above, and some torchlights shining upwards from the floor nearby.

Zeratul looked around. It seemed they had landed on the side of a large grey platform in the middle of what appeared to be a forest canopy. To one side, a vast expanse of dense foliage, with hints of light shining up from below, and the faint silhouettes of what appeared to be towers and other platforms in the distance.

On the other side was the rest of the platform, and at the far end, covering almost half the platform, there was a large hangar comprising a series of cyclopean arches with a sheet of tough black material wrapped tightly over them to form an oval, ribbed dome with a semicircular opening at one side. Against a dim orange light from within the hanger, Zeratul could make out the black sihouettes of some strange machines. Vehicles, he presumed.

And then of course, there was the crowd of Yautja surrounding and gawking at Zeratul's own vehicle which had just landed. They had roughly the same features as Urte, although they had varying skin textures and heights. Some wore suits of armour similar to Urte's own, while others wore simple loincloth.

Zeratul had put on his turban and cape to hide the fact that he looked different from the locals, so after staring at his odd costume for a few seconds, most of them ignored him and went back to studying the exotic transport that brought him there.

"Nothing to get excited about, folks, just a new ship design my friend came up with. It's quite expensive to make so keep away ! " Urte stepped down one of the Corsair's wings and pushed his way through the crowd, Zeratul following close behind.

They both walked towards the entrance of the hangar.

...…

The black wall of the bar stretched into the darkness and seemed to curve around in the distance, joining smoothly with the wall on the opposite side.

There were hard-angled niches, faint perpendicular troughs and elaborate reliefs depicting obscure scenes etched into the walls.

From the ceiling there hung rough, conical projections which ended in all sorts of tubes and points. Shining down from among these weird structures were small but intense phosphorescent lamps spaced evenly apart on the ceiling.

Long, two metre wide, grey marble benches ran around the bar, a few metres away from the walls and also across the middle of the bar. Along either side of each bench were Yautja seated in various poses, drinking from black containers of all shapes and sizes, and chatting away furiously with somebody sitting opposite or beside with loud, unrestrained clicks and hisses, probably bragging about a recent daring hunting exploit or another mate that the speaker had recently won over.

There was a thick air of revelry.

In the centre of the bar, standing atop a bench and facing each other, were two naked warriors preparing to fight each other to the death over a mysterious argument. They threatened each other with aggressive poses as a crowd gathered around that bench and cheered them on loudly.

There was a soft humming noise, and those seated near the bar entrance saw the medium-sized metallic doors swing open, bathing nearby floor and benches in the dim green light from outside. Two mysterious figures stepped in through the door. One wore the thick body armour of a Yautja hunter, while the other, taller person had a dark grey cape draped over his body, a piece of dark grey cloth wrapped around his head, and a black shroud covering where his eyes were.

They both walked past several benches to a dark corner of the bar, where a lonely beige-skinned Yautja sat, sipping an unidentifiable beverage from a black jug. He looked up at the two figures walking up to him and exclaimed, "Urte !"

Urte turned to the grey-clad figure standing beside him and raised a hand in the direction of the lonely seated Yautja, "Zeratul, I want you to meet one of the most brilliant young scientists of my clan, and also my best friend, Eya."

* * *

( Some explanations about the symbols I used :

One line across the page ( i.e the ruler ) means that I am shifting to a different part of the storyline ( e.g flashbacks ) or to non-story content.

The "……" just means "some time later,"/"some place nearby".

And yes I know there is still no obvious connection between Starcraft and the Alien/Predator universe at this point, but I assure you there will be one by the time I reach the end of this story.

Or perhaps I am just terribly bad at creating this kind of suspense :/

So bear with me now; hopefully, the next chapter will be more interesting.

- Starspawn07 )


	6. Story Time

**Chapter 5: Story Time**

The four smooth black walls of the spacious living room were slanted inwards towards the top, so that the corners converged upwards at the ceiling from where a dim fluorescent white light shone down.

In the space below were three comfortable black leather sofas arranged in a semicircle and facing a round glass table in the centre of the room.

On the one to the table's left was seated a beige-skinned Yautja dressed in simple white robes. In the middle was a pale-green skinned Yautja in black tights. On the right there was a tall figure clad in a grey flowing cape and a grey turban.

Eya stared at the figure sitting opposite him. The figure stared back at him with a pair of large, glowing eyes.

From the moment he saw him, Eya knew that this strange visitor was not from this world. The latter had concealed his entire body with the grey cloth, but Eya's learning in field zoology during his youth allowed him to pick out a distinctly non-Yautja gait. It vaguely reminded him of a long-legged bird. If there ever was a three-metre tall, upright walking bird, he mused.

Furthermore, this "bird-humanoid" made an effort to stay at least a metre away from anything they came across on the street – people, walls, light posts, tree trunks etc.

Ok, enough silence, Eya thought. "So, your name is Zeratul ?"

"Yes." Eya heard a deep voice reply. Weird, he did not see Zeratul's face moving. Oh well, he thought to himself, maybe he just tied his scarf too tightly around his face, or perhaps he talks in a different manner to us. After all, he had not spoken a word since we met in the bar.

Another moment of awkward silence, then Urte, who had been slouching in his sofa enjoying a cup of mild C'ntlip, sat up and explained the purpose of the visit, "Zeratul is rather interested in the origins of the Kainde Amedha, or the evolutionary history of any other intelligent species in this, 'sector', he calls it."

What for ? Eya thought, raising a brow-ridge.

As if hearing his thoughts, Zeratul "replied", " I am a wandering scholar. I happened to come to this star system, encountered both your species and the Kainde Amedha, was intrigued, and decided to learn more about you and them. I figured we can start with your past."

With that, Zeratul sat back a little. I _was_ a scholar, he thought. It has been a few centuries since I secretly left the Khalai caste. I hope I can still act like one.

Eya lowered his gaze and locked his hands together, not speaking for a moment.

Urte slouched back into his sofa and continued sipping his drink. His eyes shifted lazily between Zeratul and Eya, waiting for one of them to speak up.

Then Eya looked up, sat back and sighed. "Well, it happens to be one of those areas that our scientists are not too sure about."

Zeratul jerked his head back, and raised a brow-ridge in surprise.

Good, Eya thought, this guy does have facial expressions. He relaxed a bit, his shoulders drooping a few centimeters down, his mandibles rubbing loosely against each other. The air of stiffness he had just now gradually vanished.

Then he raised a hand, pointed a finger at the floor, leaned forward, and said in a serious tone, "Firstly, Zeratul, let me tell you that this planet is not really where the Yautja originated. The literature generally states that our clan settled here a whole lot of generations ago."

Now Urte raised his brow-ridges in surprise. Zeratul, on the other hand, seemed less taken aback. "Well, that explains the perfect preservation of the forests here. If this is just a colony established by a particular clan, then where did your species first emerge ?"

Eya shrugged, "Well, that's what we were unsure about. You see, nobody knows where the Yautja or the Kainde Amedha came from. By that I mean we are not sure on which planet our two species evolved. Of all the worlds that the Yautja had settled or explored, none showed any kind of evolutionary link to our species. No attributable archeological remains, no tell-tale series of fossils."

Urte sat up slowly and stared down at the cup in his hand. "Come to think of it, none of the elders have talked about this, and I have never asked myself why that is so."

"Of course you haven't. You were too engrossed in your warrior training." Eya chuckled at Urte, then looked back at Zeratul.

"Um, so … yes, it was as if our species, all our clans, had led an interplanetary existence since the beginning of our recorded history !"

Zeratul sat up. He interest in the topic just grew dramatically, though he could not yet point to a particular, straight-forward reason.

"And what of the Kainde Amedha ?"

"Same with them." Eya said. "Though 'interplanetary' does not apply very accurately to them, since the creatures do not have the technology for space travel. Yet, strangely, they are, like us, distributed on numerous different worlds, with no particular planet of origin as far was we can tell. The elders say that their initial distribution also formed a strange pattern in relation to that of the Yautja, but they are not sure what that pattern was, since for generations Yautja warriors have bred and transported Kainde Amedha here and there as a favoured game organism.

You see, the more dangerous the prey, the more that people like Urte enjoy hunting them for sport."

"Guilty as charged." Urte raised his arms and smiled.

"So the origins of both of your species has been a complete mystery then ?" Zeratul asked. He had his own suspicions from the beginning, and there was a chance he was right.

"Not really."Eya thought for a moment, then continued. "There is a folklore preserved in some of the older clans. Every clan had a slightly different version of it, but all of them share some similar and interesting points, which I noted down during exchange programmes with other clans.

It goes roughly like this. All the versions of the tale mention a wondrous homeworld of the Yautja, where our Ancestors lived, sharing a primitive, simplistic culture. Details vary – such as each clan had different mythological heroes said to have lived during this period; descriptions of their physical appearance also seemed to differ slightly from clan to clan - but all agree on the general environment that they lived in and the fact that their culture was primitive.

And then, the story goes, a group of divine beings came upon this world from far away in space, and decided to take our ancestors up into space as well. Some say they did so because they were impressed by our ancestors' bravery and considered the latter to be worthy of the benefits they were to be endowed with; others talk about some obscure tests deviced by these divine beings which our ancestors passed.

Anyway, the Divine Ones went on to magically modify our ancestors to make them stronger and more effective warriors, creating the species known as the Yautja - us. They taught us the secrets of the Universe, gave us our technology, and taught us honour and morals."

Some recent memories were brought up in Zeratul's mind, and one word rang loudly among his thoughts. _Xel'Naga …_

"Again, the particular legends about this period differ from clan to clan.

There was also reference to various incredible abilities that our ancestors possessed at this time … but whatever powers were developed in us by the Divine Ones, it seemed we lost them." Eya paused for a moment, wondering if Zeratul was taking in all that he said.

"Go on." Zeratul urged. Suspicion confirmed, he thought, partially that is.

Eya continued, "See, somehow our ancestors' trust in the Divine Ones dwindled, and we eventually turned on them. The reasons given are vague and conflicting. Anyways, a disastrous war ensued and - "

"The Divine Ones left and never returned ?" Zeratul finished for him.

"Well, yes," Eya replied. "but before they did they let loose another of their creations on us. Fearsome, formidable creatures …"

"The Kainde Amedha." Zeratul said.

Eya grinned at Zeratul for a while, then said, "Yes. Since then we became each other's most powerful adversaries …

Well, all that was folklore. Many scientists have tried to find solid proof of certain elements in the legend, and then given up. It is quite hard to find concrete positive evidence of our species having been the result of genetic experiments by another more advanced species in the past …

That was, until the discovery of the Derelict."

"The what ?" Zeratul had never heard that word before.

"An ancient spaceship that landed ages ago on a barren planet near the outer edge of this star system. Kurh, my mentor back at the Academy, led a scientific expedition to explore its interior, and made some discoveries that changed the way we looked at the history of the Kainde Amedha."

Now both Urte and Zeratul leaned forward attentively.

Eya leaned forward too, opened his eyes wide and spoke in a serious tone again,"The ship contained large, artificial, Kainde Amedha hatcheries. The design of the chamber walls were far too intricate to have been crafted by the creatures themselves, so the conclusion was that the ship was built by another species to serve both as a transport and rearing ground for the Kainde Amedha."

"Was it not one of our own ships ?" Urte asked.

"No, the architectural details of the ship are rather alien compared to that of any clan I have visited. Further, the ship has been dated with various methods, and all of them suggest a ballpark of a million years old. Somewhere around that."

Urte's eyes widened in disbelief.

In contrast, Zeratul looked strangely calm. "I can see the implications of this." He said.

"Yes. It is so old that the one and only remains of what was assumed to be the ship's pilot has virtually fossilized right in its seat where it died. It seemed that sometime in the past the Kainde Amedha broke loose and killed off the ship's crew, then went back into suspended animation, waiting for the next groups of victims to stumble upon the wreckage … and then finally, we stumbled upon it."

At this point Eya stopped talking, lowered his head and looked down on the floor. He clasped his hands tightly together.

Zeratul saw that he was shaking slightly. "Something happened to Kurh and his team ?"

"He thought it was alright." Eya replied softly. "Just last week he even invited me to see the Derelict. Shortly after I arrived, I got a glimpse of his most shocking discovery: a large specimen of what appeared to be a Yautja – Kainde Amedha hybrid, still alive after those long millenia."

_Hybrid …_ . The word echoed back and forth in Zeratul's head.

"It was alive ?" Urte asked excitedly.

"Yes, we detected a faint but growing pulse from it, and some of its appendages were slowly moving about, as if our discovery of the chamber in which it was held had somehow revived it. But we ignored those disturbing signs. We ignored the occasional dusty crumpled skeleton at the dark corners. We thought we were safe. Kurh showed me several more tanks; in them were the ghastly-looking wrinkled specimens of Kainde Amedha and other strange creatures that we had never seen before.

And then it happened.

We heard the loud noise of shattering glass and splashing water, and before we knew it, the monster had climbed out of its tank and was killing off everyone in its path. There were cries and screams, and bloody corpses flung here and there. It was horrible." Eya shook his head. "Kurh had his left leg ripped off while he pushed me out of the creature's way, and we would have both died if the Chief of Security had not temporarily distracted it and dragged us off quickly towards the chamber entrance.

We couldn't do anything to stop it. Our weapons were useless against it. We ran out of the chamber and sealed off its entrance, then were informed to our horror that packs of Kainde Amedha drones had appeared out of nowhere at various locations in the Derelict. There had been a whole swarm of them hiding in that ship and we never realized it !

Amidst the panic, Kurh and I managed to board our shuttles and escape along with a sizeable band of survivors … but still … so much death … " Eya finished and then there was a moment of silence.

"Well, I'm glad you made it."Urte patted Eya's shoulder.

Zeratul stood up. He hesitated for a few seconds, then said, " I am sorry for what you had to go through, Eya, I know it was rather … traumatizing … but, still … could you take me to the Derelict ?"

Eya looked up in shock. "What ? Are you out of your mind ?"

You have no idea what I can do with my mind, Zeratul thought. " Well, what you have told me was informative, but there are some things that I just need to see for myself."

Eya narrowed one eye in bewilderment, "Do all scholars of your species throw away your lives in pursuit of the truth ?"

A mild grin appeared on Urte's face. "Well, Eya, I have seen this fellow in action, and I wouldn't say that he's just a mere scholar. Besides, if the situation in this Derelict is as you have described, then it would prove to be an exciting hunt for me."

"Ah, you and your honourable challenges." Eya sat back, arms spread apart, and rolled up his eyes.

"Hey, I've been through more battles than most other un-blooded warriors. I deserve this !" Urte protested.

Zeratul blinked, not knowing what to say.

"He's still bitter that he has never gotten the chance to kill a Kainde Amedha by his own hands." Eya explained.

"Oh." Zeratul did not fully comprehend what this was about, but he had a rough picture.

Eya sat up and sighed. "Well, my friends, if you insist on going there, I have no choice but to comply. To be safe, let me bring along one more person with us. He lives just nearby."

* * *

( Coming up next … k, it's pretty obvious what the next part of the story will be about,

So be patient and look forward to another exciting chapter of the Grey Templar !

And wow, I've got 2 reviews ! .

Thanks, guys.

- Starspawn07)


	7. Operational

**Chapter 6: Operational**

Zuz walked up to the pedestral near the entrance of the spacious but pitch black room. It resembled a half- metre wide deformed black sea urchin with lines of small bumps and flickering red and green diodes running down its shell, set on a short black segmented pillar which slanted towards the middle of the room and then bent slightly in the opposite direction towards Zuz.

He pressed a few of the bumps on the pedestral, and a second later there was a loud rumbling sound.

The three people standing behind Zuz leaned back against the wall in surprise as a two metre by six metre section in the centre of the featureless black marble floor sank down and then split in its middle, each portion sliding underneath the rest of the floor to reveal a deep, misty pit beneath from which an intense green light shone up.

Segmented, bronze- coloured poles slowly extended upwards from deep within the pit, each ending in weird curved bars from which there hung a wide assortment of spears, suits of armour, what looked like guns, and some other dubious – looking equipment.

Some metre by metre segments opened up in a similar fashion at regular intervals on walls at the far end of the room, each with a metre wide horizontal marble slab extending out from within the mist. Resting on these slabs were some gauntlets, helmets and more dubious – looking equipment.

"My personal collection, made of the most acid resistant materials and designed for maximal protection and effectiveness. Take your picks." Zuz spread his arms and turned towards the three standing behind him with a grin on his face. The latter eagerly approached the niches on the walls or walked around the pit in the floor and peered intently at the weaponry being displayed, like museum visitors touring their favourite exhibition.

Zuz walked towards a pair of unusually large gauntlets held in front of a niche near him and proceeded to put them on. "I'd advice you not to go there, though. Especially after I took the pains to evacuate as many people I as could from that place."

Urte, who had his eyes fixed on a long, segmented, elegant looking pole-arm sticking out from the pit, chuckled, "Surely, the famed Wind Demon is not afraid of monsters now ?"

"No, but when you get to my age, lad, there occur to you things that are more important than proving your courage and honour. Especially as the Chief of Security, it is my responsibility to keep people safe from the dangers lurking in that dreadful wreckage." Zuz held up both arms and clenched his fingers into tight fists. Two half-metre long segmented paper-thin silvery swords extended immediately from the back of each gauntlet he wore, like oversized paper-cutters. They pointed and bent slightly in the direction of his fists. An additional metre-long blade extended in the direction of each elbow. Satisfied, he lowered his arms and retracted the wrist-blades. "Then again, it is also my responsibility to go back to the site and check on its status. I guess it doesn't hurt to bring a few more men with me."

Urte detached the pole-arm from its gripper and immediately its two ends retracted towards the middle, collapsing one segment into another, reducing its length from four metres to one and a half. At one end there was what looked like a slender, half-metre long saber with a curved edge and several smaller blades folded into its base, at the other a thin spear-head with still smaller blades folded into its base. Urte twisted one of the outer segments, and the pole extended fully again. He swung and spun it about randomly for a few seconds, then put it down on the floor and walked over towards the wall to help Eya put on a suit of armour.

Zeratul found that none of the sets of plated armour fit him well, so he had to be satisfied with a stretchy, black, hooded tight suit which Zuz claimed was highly resistant to tear. Oh well, Zeratul, thought, I still have my cape and plasma shield anyways.

"Alright, once we are within Kainde Amedha territory, never take off these masks. If any hostile creature approaches you, you can aim your shoulder cannon just by staring at your target. The button to fire is hidden within your mask and can be reached with your lower mandibles." Urte steadied Eya's helmet. It was a simplistic metal headgear molded over the contours of his entire head except areas where his braids protruded, with narrow horizontal visors and a trapezoidal bulge to accommodate his mandibles.

"Don't worry, I've had my weapons training."Eya reassured his friend, then pulled out from the wall-niche behind him a pair of heavy handguns resembling ribbed black tubes with long straps attached to their slanted hilts. He clipped the ends of the straps onto the holsters on his waist.

"Oh yes I recall, "Urte said as he turned back to try some more pole-arms, "you scored full during target practice and then went on to babble about the mathematics involved in shooting."

"Haha, you two remind me of Kurh and I when we were young." Zuz laughed.

Zeratul regarded the elder Yautja from where he stood.

Zuz was slightly taller and leaner than Urte or Eya. He had pale grey skin with faint wrinkles behind his eyes and cheeks. On his left cheek there was a shallow, dark-green scar resembling a slanted fern frond with nine branches.

Zuz saw Zeratul staring at his scar, so he smiled and explained, "It's a mark of honour unique to our clan that I received in my Blooding ceremony. I started with a three branched fern after I passed my first Trial of Skill, then more branches were added as I accomplished even greater achievements."

Zuz seemed totally at ease with Zeratul. He had probably traveled very widely and seen a lot in his life, judging from his advanced age and the number of branches on his scar, so the sight of an alien being like Zeratul did not disturb him in the least.

Besides, Zeratul had refrained from using telepathy now. He had learned enough of the Yautja language to allow him to vocalize some basic phrases by vibrating the book gills under his cheeks and the sides of his chest.

……

"Wow, you sure know how to modify your ride." Urte exclaimed as he stepped over the top of the stairwell onto Zuz's personal landing platform atop the forest canopy and beheld the large, light –grey craft parked at its side.

"Well, I've had a century to do that." Zuz said as he walked across the platform towards his shuttle, motioning for the rest to follow him.

Zeratul took a moment to enjoy the cool night breeze and observed the shape of the shuttle. It was very compact in design and resembled a cross between one of those large hovering trucks built by the Terrans and an overgrown beetle: its contours were vastly more aerodynamic than that of a truck but slightly more angular than that of a beetle.

Its two body segments were connected in the middle by a depressed black band.

Covering the slanted front and top of the front segment was a large flat trapezoidal windscreen. There were also two elongated, quarter-circular windows on each side of this segment.

Its enormous, cuboid hind segment was covered in angular but gently curving ridges and troughs along its length. On both sides, held a few metres away from the main body of the hind segment by an intermittent series of thick horizontal boards were two gigantic thrusters each as tall as Zeratul himself.

Zuz turned the circular door at the back of the shuttle and then opened it, then all four of them climbed through into the black matted interior of the shuttle. Zuz walked over and sat down at the cockpit housed inside the front segment while the other three settled into one of the passenger benches. "Strap down. There is a cruiser heading for the edge of this star system. If we are fast, we can catch up and hitch a ride in it before it accelerates out of the atmosphere. Even so, it will take us half a day to reach our destination."

Zeratul stretched then collapsed back into his seat. He had had a long day, and still there was going to be another long day ahead of him. He slowly closed his weary eyelids, and let his mind drift off into a star system far far away, to a time long long ago …

* * *

"Be safe, Dark One." Tassadar put a hand on Zeratul's shoulder as the latter stepped out of the shuttle.

"I will. Just make sure that there are no Overlords to sight me when I sneak in." Zeratul drew his cape over him and tested his warp blade.

"Do not worry, my fleet would have blasted all of them out of the sky before you even get there. Still, you need to be careful." Tassadar said. "Come back in one piece. You haven't finished teaching me the ways of the Dark Templar yet."

"Same here, High Templar Tassadar."Zeratul replied.

Both of them laughed and embraced each other. Then Zeratul turned and sped off across the ash and lava filled landscape of Char towards the menacing Zerg Hive in the distance, followed closely behind him by a few more dark templar.

Loud fiery explosions lit up the dark red sky of Char and flocks of screeching mutalisks swooped up to meet the Protoss Carriers and Interceptors in a massive aerial battle.

Zeratul and his band of stealth assassins slipped past the Zerg's ground defenses with ease, dodging the occasional smouldering corpse of a four-metre long giant beetle larva with bat-like wings or giant crab the size of a large shuttle which crashed into the ground here and there. Bright blue orbs of plasma and pieces of metal debris slammed into the towering spires and organic structures of the Hive and thick pale orange smoke blanketed the whole area amidst splashes of green or red blood and groans and hisses of dead or dying Zerglings and Drones.

Soon, they had descended into one of the dark subterranean tunnels of the Hive. Occasionally they would find their path blocked by packs of tall, serpent-like Hydralisks, or a hulking Ultralisk, but having nasty scythes on your forearms and titanic mandibular tusks would not help you if you couldn't see your enemy. The creatures were quickly incapacitated with skillful swipes from the dark templars' warp blades.

Finally, they arrived in a large central cavern at the center of which sat what appeared to be an enormous ten-metre long and five metre thick grey-coloured grub covered in a thick layer of gelatin. Its body pulsated in a sickening fashion.

"You can't kill me ! I am a cerebrate ! Even if you destroy my physical form here the Overmind will have me reincarnated and then I shall have my revenge on you !" It hissed telepathically as it sensed the dark templar approaching.

Ignoring Zasz's hollow threats, Zeratul walked up to it, raised his warp blade in the air and called upon the power of the Void. The blade's bright white core dimmed and turned black as it extended a further two metres and its translucent blue surface turned brilliant red.

"By Adun !"Zeratul shouted then charged forward and plunged the blade right through the middle of Zasz's body, pinning the latter onto the cave floor.

Zasz let out an ear-piercing, blood curdling scream and its body began to convulse violently. Its gelatinous covering began to froth and boil. Suddenly, its whole body ballooned up and exploded, filling the cavern with a thin red mist. Where it once sat there was nothing but a four metre long warp blade driven diagonally into the floor.

"Prelate Zeratul, we have word from Tassadar," one of the other dark templars said. " The Zerg forces have been plunged into a state of chaos. They are attacking random targets, even their own. We have succeeded !"

"Good, let us get out of here." Zeratul tugged at his warp blade. It did not budge.

Then Zeratul gasped in shock as translucent red tendrils burst up through the floor and wrapped themselves tightly around his warpblade and himself.

Some of the thicker tentacles extended up towards the ceiling of the cavern and converged into each other. The resulting translucent red sphere gradually formed itself into a five-metre wide eyeball with golden iris and a vertical, slit like pupil.

It peered down at the struggling figure caught within its tendrils. Its deep, reverberating voice resounded across the cavern walls, and in the minds of those who heard it.

"I see YOU !"

Zeratul looked up, petrified, at the terrifying spectral form of the Zerg Overmind.

"So THAT was HOW YOU KILLED SCYLLA and BEHEMOTH as well. YOU WIELD ENERGIES SIMILAR to MY OWN !"

Zeratul tried pushing against the tendrils again, but he could not move.

"ZASZ was BOUND to ME as INTIMATELY as any OTHER CEREBRATE. Did YOU EXPECT to use a PSIONIC ATTACK on HIM and not get CAUGHT ?"

Zeratul felt the tips of the tendrils dig into his head and his back, and screamed in pain. A flood of confusing and horrifying images flashed through his mind.

"PERFECT ! for all THOSE MILLENIA I have been SEARCHING for the SECRET HOMEWORLD of the FIRST-BORN, and NOW I have its LOCATION !

at LAST ! I shall ASSIMILATE the STRONGEST SPECIES in this SECTOR into the SWARM, the PURITY of ESSENCE and the PURITY of FORM shall become ONE, and WE shall be PERFECT !"

The Overmind tightened its tendrils around Zeratul, and the latter felt his consciousness draining away.

"We must free him ! Quick !"Zeratul heard a voice behind him shout.

He saw the blurry shimmer of a warp blade slashing at the stems of the tendrils between him and the ground, and felt a few hands grab him by the arms and shoulder and drag him forcefully backwards, shaking him loose of what remaining psychic hold the Overmind had over him …

* * *

Zeratul felt someone violently shaking him by the shoulder. He opened his eyes and looked up.

"Ah, you are finally awake !" It was Urte. "We are there already !"

"The Cruiser ?"

"No, the Derelict."

Zeratul stood up with a start. Damn, he missed his chance to tour the Yautja cruiser that they were supposed to hitch a ride on.

Of all times, he had to have another nightmare flashback during the ride. The assassination of Zasz happened long before he even met Kerrigan or Duran. It seemed that he was reliving every traumatic personal event in a reversed chronological order.

The next one could be my exile from Aiur and my initiation into the Dark Templar, he mused, or something more "ancient".

The door hatch spun and swiveled open, and three Yautja and a Protoss stepped out onto the dark blue, rocky landscape. A thick, pale blue mist hung in every direction. Against the dim, white moonlight, there was a titanic, almost apocalyptic silhouette towering an immeasurable distance above and over them, like a great black serpent looking down at a few ants on the cracked ground through swamp mist.

The four of them put on their full armour, tested their weapons one more time, and walked towards the dark, unfathomable base of the silhouette.


	8. Break In

**Chapter 7: Break-In**

"Man … did you _have_ to seal off every entrance ?" Eya complained as he felt around the edge of the oval doorway.

"Be glad that we ever discovered the way to operate these doors, and that they can still work at all."Zuz replied as he shone the torchlight onto Eya's hands for him to see what he was groping at.

They had reached the end of the main passageway now. It was rather dark, but whatever light from Zuz's torch that was scattered off the walls revealed that they had been trekking through a large, tubular, black tunnel with thick, organic wrinkles on its walls.

At the end of the tunnel, where the four were standing, was what looked like a five metre tall, closed, grey-coloured doorway shaped like a vertically oriented oval. It had a faint ridge running around it and at its centre was a tiny pore with fat wrinkles and folds radiating outwards from it, like a closed sphincter, or thin puckered lips.

Zeratul pressed into the door with his hand. Its surface was pliable, like rubber or plastic, but beneath it a more rigid hidden structure resisted his pushing.

_Ah, you are finally here, First – Born …_

Zeratul froze, his eyes widened, then he quickly withdrew his hands from the door and staggered a few steps back, holding his hands over his head for a while.

"Are you alright ?" Urte asked, concerned.

"I'm fine." Zeratul looked down at the floor, still a bit shaken.

"Aha ! I found it !" Eya exclaimed, then pressed down on one of the series of tiny, irregular bumps in the middle of the wall.

The pore in the centre of the doorway expanded and quickly spread apart, until the door had completely receded into the surrounding ridge.

An oval shaft of dim light shone down onto the tunnel floor. "Now that's weird, I'd expect all the lamps to have fused by now." Eya puzzled then stepped through, and the rest followed, into the magnificent Main Hall of the Derelict.

The ribbed columns of strange relief patterns running down the all - encircling grey wall and converging at the centre of the floor. At the foot of the wall, in between every two columns, was an oval doorway similar to the one that they had just walked through, leaning away from the centre of the Hall due to the curvature of the wall.

The Hall strongly resembled the interior of a certain Xel-Naga temple that Zeratul had visited on Shaquras, except that the latter was not grey all over like this. In fact that was the only ancient temple discovered by the Protoss to have been left by the Xel'Naga themselves, and that one temple saved them from a Zerg invasion of Shaquras that would have wiped out most of the Protoss species.

This Hall also vaguely reminded him of the underground cavern in which Zasz was killed. Zeratul shuddered at the thought, then brushed it away and looked towards the large brown stone monument jutting up from the middle of the floor.

He felt a familiar energy emanating from somewhere in the Hall, but for the moment he ignored it and walked towards the monument.

"Yeah, that was the 'fossil' of the pilot that I was talking about." Eya explained as he too walked towards the strange looking structure. Urte and Zuz followed close behind.

As Zeratul approached it he could make out the shocking figure of a giant, brown, skeletal humanoid, eye sockets hollow and ribs cracked and exposed, wrapped into what looked like a large brown seat, both slanting backwards. Even in this reclined posture, the dead pilot was far taller than Zeratul himself. A layer of unidentifiable material, now brown and hardened like the rest of the 'fossil' was wrapped around the lower half of the humanoid's face and narrowed into a tube which ran down the side of its body.

Zeratul's heart pounded furiously as he stood beside the petrified corpse and looked up at its expressionless face. Was this the face of a Xel'Naga ?

Come alive and talk to me, Zeratul thought. Nothing happened.

Zeratul sighed and looked to up, towards the source of that familiar energy.

In front of the dead pilot and extending diagonally upwards and forwards from it, was a giant, dark brown telescope-like structure almost as thick as the "fossil" below, but many times as long, its lower end dissolving into the floor through a short but still gigantic stem and its upper end almost resting on a wide semicircular cliff-like platform which jutted out from where the upper wall curved in towards the ceiling of the Hall. In the middle above that platform was another closed oval doorway, possibly leading to an unknown upper storey in the Derelict.

Zeratul dug his hands into faint grooves on the telescope and began to climb upwards.

Eya looked at Urte with a bewildered expression. The latter shrugged.

"We should stay close to each other."Zuz said, then began to climb the telescope as well, followed by the two younger Yautja.

From a tiny hole in the ceiling, the Hybrid Queen peered down at the four figures crowding around the upper end of the telescope. One of them looked recognizably different from the others.

One of the First-born, the species that the Creators recalled with that strong mix of nostalgia and deep regret.

The Queen detected the psionic emanations from this individual when he first entered this star system. Faint, but unmistakably that of a First-Born. She had been excited to meet one. Yet now, all she beheld was a lean humanoid figure, resembling a mouthless Yautja with digitigrade feet. So frail, so weak. A failed experiment indeed, the Queen mused.

And the Yautja; they had forgotten what powers they used to wield, they had become weak as well, and redundant. Their value ended the moment that she herself was born. They were once able to hold their own against the Creators, but the Yautja she had encountered these days were disappointingly far from being the powerful creatures their ancestors were. They would be destroyed eventually, starting from their little colony on that neaby planet.

_All weak and redundant life forms must be destroyed._

Zeratul looked around with a start, then looked back at the array of knobs and spikes infront of him. I must have been imagining things, he thought.

The four of them were standing on the cliff-like platform and were facing the upper end of the telescope. In the centre of this large circular surface was a deep, half-metre wide conical pit with a faint blue glow from inside. Zeratul reached inside, felt around for a while, then withdraw his arm. In his hand now was a thirty centrimetre long brilliant translucent blue trigonal crystal with parts chipped off from its vertices. Beneath its surface Zeratul could make out some hazy, iridescent violet structures.

_Hybrid …_

Eya saw Zeratul staring at the crystal, and asked, "Have you seen such crystals before ?"

"Yes, but not in this form." Zeratul replied, and shoved the Khaydarin - Argus crystal into a pocket on his tightsuit.

At that moment, Zeratul became aware of a strong presence, like the one he felt when he first encountered the Xenomorphs and when Urte first attacked him. This one was far denser and more dominating.

And it came from somewhere on top of the Main Hall.

Urte and Eya looked up in panic as they heard the loud noise, of metal and plastic being ripped and stretched apart, coming from the ceiling. An enormous bulge had formed in the middle of the dome-like ceiling. There was something writhing and pushing downwards inside that bulge. Soon, a tear appeared on the underside of the bulge and opened up wide, then a large black shape dropped through with a sickening squelch, and crashed onto the floor beneath with a loud thud.

The four of them stood and stared down in horror as the Hybrid slowly stood up and stared back at them with a wicked grin. It resembled a Xenomorph Queen, though it only had one pair of heavy, sinister looking forearms, and on its huge face were the eyes and mandibles of a Yautja.

Then they heard a series of screeches and looked up again to see a crowd of Xenomorphs emerge from the tear in the ceiling and crawl out across the ceiling down the walls of the Hall in every direction.

Zeratul noticed that these Xenomorphs were slightly longer than the ones he encountered on the jungle planet, with sleeker limbs and shorter, sharper spines on their backs. Rather than smooth head shields, these ones had faint ridges along the tops of their long heads. Some of them pulled back their full, soft lips to expose long thin jaws with short, shearing teeth as they let out menacing screeches and hisses.

A more archaic breed, Zeratul thought.

"Seems, Urte, we are finally going to get Blooded for sure." Eya said sarcastically and leaned back onto the middle of the doorway.

There was the intermittent sound of gunfire. Tiny blue orbs of plasma flew out from Eya's left shoulder across the Hall. Several Xenomorphs dropped down to the floor, screeching in pain.

And they kept coming.

The entire Hall was crawling with them.

They were slowly approaching the platform, straining to stay on the wall at the same time. They could not charge all at once like they could do on level ground, but they were all advancing, inch by inch, waiting to leap onto the platform once they got close enough.

Zuz jumped back a step back, leaned against the wall behind him, extended his wrist blades and raised both arms in a swift uppercut. Pale green fluid splashed all around him, and a Xenomorph fell to the floor below, with several wide gashes across its chest and belly.

Two of the creatures pounced on Urte. He extended his combi-stick forwards and impaled one of them in its throat. The other was a metre away from him when a white thread of light slashed down through its neck. Urte stepped aside and leaned against the wall as the creature's severed head and body skidded across the platform, and felt a searing pain in his knees as its flailing tail whipped at his legs before it fell off the other side.

Dodging the flying Xenomorph corpse, Zuz leapt and spun round in the air, splitting the head of a Xenomorph before it had the chance to leap down on him. Another Xenomorph knocked him onto the wall as he landed and bit down hard on his shoulder. Ignoring the pain, Zuz elbowed the creature, driving both the third blades on his arms repeatedly into its chest. The creature screeched in pain, but held on to Zuz's back.

Urte shook the Xenomorph off his combi-stick and swept it up the wall in a wide arc, then cursed as two heavily injured Xenomorphs fell down on him. Dodging a confused flurry of tail spikes, and claws, he quickly side-stepped his way towards the doorway.

Eya pointed his gun upwards and fired round after round in that direction, while frantically searching for some faint bumps on the wall. A Xenomorph fell towards him, hit the ridge above the doorway and tumbled forward, to be electrocuted against Zeratul's plasma shield.

The Hybrid Queen had climbed up the telescope now. Its gargantuan black head peered over the upper end of the telescope and looked down at Zeratul. There was a ball of red mist swirling in the palm of the latter's left hand.

Quickly, Zeratul leapt forward and slammed the energy ball into the Queen's forehead. There was a blinding flash of orange white light and for what seemed like a few seconds all nearby Xenomorphs froze in their positions, still clinging onto the wall. Zuz shook off the Xenomorph from his back and dashed towards the doorway.

Then a series of overwhelmingly horrifying images swept through Zeratul's mind, and he was violently thrown backwards by an invisible force. He was slammed against the doorway and all the air went out from his book lungs.

The Hybrid Queen slipped a metre or two down the telescope, its limbs shaking and roared. It was an ear-piercing metallic screech mixed with rolling thunder.

_Is that all you've got, First-Born ? I was subjected to all sorts of psionic assaults during the Creators' experiments. Your dark energies are useless against me !_

Just then the doorway spread open, and Eya, Urte and Zuz leapt through, dragging Zeratul's limp body behind them, just as the Xenomorphs recovered from Zeratul's Maelstrom. Urte twisted a certain segment on his combi-stick and waved it randomly at the entrance, sparks flying from its tip, while Eya and Zuz searched for the switches on this side of the doorway. Then Zuz punched at a point on the wall and the opening of the door shrank immediately back into a tiny pore in the centre.

There were faint screeches and the door convulsed as something pounded at it from outside.

Then the noise died down and the three Yautja heaved a sigh of relief. It seemed that this section of the wall was not as easily torn up as the ceiling of the Hall.

They looked around and saw that they were in a spacious but dark room with smooth, curved grey-coloured walls. At one corner was a dusty, crumpled and harmless-looking skeleton.Opposite the doorway was what looked like a large, oval shaped five-metre wide glass window through which moonlight shone onto the floor from outside.

Gazing through the window into the darkness outside, Eya could make out the faint landscape of mountains and rocks in the distance amidst a thick, pale blue mist. When he walked closer and peered from side to side, he could see a smooth, grey surface which seemed to extended in all directions from under the window. To the front, this surface curved down into a wide, unfathomable valley. The walls on either side of this valley curved up and outwards and seemed to slant up towards the farther end of the valley, where it opened to allow a clear view of the landscape beyond. Then he realized that he was looking at the space between the two giant arms of the Derelict from above.

Sitting up against a wall, Zeratul felt his consciousness fading away. He saw Urte looking at him with a concerned expression. Then his vision blurred and melted away completely. He heard the telepathic voice of the Hybrid resounding in his head as his mind drifted off into the darkness.

_Resistance is futile. This star system is mine …_

The orange glow in Zeratul's eyes quickly dimmed and turned pitch black.

"Oh great, he just blacked out on us, literally."Urte sat down as well, exhausted.

"Alright then, this is what we are going to do."Zuz said in a serious and urgent tone as he detached a small black cylinder from his gauntlet. "First, we break that window with everything we have got and I call my shuttle here. Next, I open that door and throw this bomb to the other side,"He pointed to the black box in his hands. "and quickly close it. Then we all board my shuttle and fly off. Finally, I activate the bomb and blow up the Derelict."

Urte and Eya nodded their approval.

A loud rumbling sound drowned out all their voices and the room shook violently.

Then the shaking and rumbling subsided, leaving a softer humming sound.

Zuz turned to the window and looked out into the distance. It was hardly noticeable at first, but soon the faraway hills and rocks seemed to slowly sink into the mist, and there was a constant gust of mist flowing down over the window.

"C'jit ! This can't be happening !"Zuz exclaimed.

"What's happening ?" Urte ran over to the window and gasped in shock at what he saw.

"The Derelict," Zuz said softly, " is lifting itself off the ground."


	9. Revelations

**Chapter 8: Revelations**

Zeratul kicked open the windscreen and stepped through the door of the bronze-coloured freighter out onto the sandy ground.

Before him was a dark blue, desert-like landscape of shallow, empty valleys and slate-like plateaus. Jutting from the side of a faraway cliff was what appeared to be the vertebrae and ribcage of a giant skeletal form buried within the plateau - the fossil of a long dead creature.

A purple aurora with hazy streaks of blue rippled across the black night sky. Above the completely straight horizon a thin line of dim blue light and tiny points of white light contrasted with the total blackness in the distance.

The air was clear and it was all quiet except for the soft howling of the wind.

This place was both refreshing and yet familiar to Zeratul.

As he looked up to admire the small, hazy blue moon in the middle of the sky, he was temporally blinded by a sudden flash of bright white light from in front of him. When the light died down, he saw a figure in white robes standing three metres before him. It was a protoss, but the glow from its eyes was a glaring white rather than blue or orange.

When Zeratul's own eyes adjusted to the glare, he recognized the exact resemblance of this mysterious figure to the depictions of a revered ancient sage on some murals that he saw when he was young.

Ancient, Zeratul thought, this is definitely not a flashback of my own.

For a moment, he stood staring at the figure, then the latter's radiance overwhelmed him, and he fell on his knees, prostrating himself before the Bringer of Light.

The figure smiled then motioned towards the landscape around them. "Do you remember this place, Zeratul ?"

"Yes …"Zeratul stammered. " This is the spot where I first landed on Shaquras after being exiled from Aiur."

The figure in white robes turn to his side and look up at the sky. "When the Ancient Fathers left Aiur, they left behind a few scriptures and the mystical Khaydarin crystals, in the hopes that an enlightened Protoss would come across them and use them to bring an end to the Aeon of Strife, and restore what the Protoss lost during that dreadful era.

After several millennia, they were finally discovered, by me. I went on to unite the Protoss tribes, and rebuilt that precious thing that all members of our species used to share."

"The Link." Zeratul muttered.

"Yes, even after a Protoss dies, his or her essence is preserved in the Link. That includes my own." Then the Bringer of Light turned to look at Zeratul with a mild expression of resignation.

Zeratul's eyes widened and he looked up with a start. " When I left Aiur, you called out to me ! but I ignored it …"

"All your friends and family called out to you, Zeratul." The Bringer of Light walked slowly towards the kneeled figure before him, like an elderly man approaching a child.

Zeratul lowered his head and sighed,"I failed them … I failed Aiur … I have failed to protect those who are important to me … even now …"

An subtle, understanding expression appeared on the aged face of the elder Protoss. "No you will not. Embrace the Light, Zeratul."

"That is not possible, O Ascended One. I am Dark Templar."Zeratul sighed again.

The Ascended One smiled and spread his arms. "Severance is not permanent."

Zeratul felt behind his head with his hands. His nerve cords were still at their full length, tied together in a bunch, as they were before he joined the Dark Templar.

Then the Ascended One walked even closer towards Zeratul, motioned for the latter to stand up, and looked straight into the younger protoss's eyes.

"See, Zeratul, you resent. You wanted to be a warrior but you were born into a different Caste. You resent the rules imposed on you by the Path of Ascension. You resent the Conclave for banishing you from Aiur just because you secretly practiced the disciplines of the Templar. You resent the Judicators for branding Tassadar a traitor just because he befriended the Dark Templar, and imprisoning him, even as he fought the Protoss's greatest enemy with all his might, and eventually his life. You resent everything about the Khala for all the misery it has brought upon you and your people. You resent, and you resist.

And so subconsciously you distanced yourself from the Light."

Realising the truth of those words, Zeratul lowered his gaze and shook his head.

"The Ancient Fathers taught that every visible phenomenon arises as one half of a greater whole. Energy and Entropy, Matter and Anti-matter, instinct and reason, The Void and the Light.

They suppress and annihilate each other, but they also create each other.

Infinity is Singularity.

From Nothingness comes Everything …" Then the Ascended One saw Zeratul's face light up, and he continued in a joyful tone,

"Those that resist will be broken,

Those that yield will come back.

Yield, Zeratul, and recover…"

Then Zeratul was engulfed in a shower of blinding white light, and he felt a comforting warmth flow through his body, dispelling all stress and irritation …

* * *

Urte stared at Zeratul's blank-looking face. He lightly slapped the latter's forehead. "Wake up ! Wake up ! We need you !" 

"It's no use. We are trapped inside a million-year old spaceship, and we have no idea where it's headed." Eya kept staring through the large window. Except for the two arms of the Derelict all he could see was the blackness of space, and a few stars.

"Well, we could still wait for it to land _somewhere_, then break the window, leave the bomb, and run away …"Zuz raised the black box still clutched in his right hand. "… if that somewhere has an atmosphere, that is …"

Urte ignored the other two and kept staring at Zeratul. Come on, he thought, wake up.

Then all of a sudden, Zeratul's black eyes flashed a brilliant blue. He arched his back and took a long deep breath.

"Holy God of Death !" Urte exclaimed as he leapt backwards in shock, landing painfully on his backside with a loud -clang-.

Zuz and Eya spun around as they heard the commotion, and narrowed their eyes in surprise at the sight of Zeratul, now awake and breathing heavily, with a dim blue glow in his eyes.

Gradually, Zeratul's breathing softened, and he slowly stood up, leaning up against the wall and looking curiously around the dark room. The three Yautja were not wearing their helmets now. Did that mean they were safe from the Xenomorphs now ?

"We went through the doorway to escape the Kainde Amedha." Zuz explained, pointing at the large oval-shaped impression in the wall opposite the window. "I locked it from this side. The creatures won't trouble us for some time."

"What happened," Urte asked as he sat up, gently rubbing his back. "after you drove that glowing thing into that … Hybrid's head ?"

"I was repulsed." Zeratul replied calmly. "The energies of the Void were useless against the Hybrid Queen, at least not in the form that I channeled."

"The energies of the Void ?" Zuz raised a brow-ridge and crossed his arms, confused but intrigued.

Zeratul sighed and sat down again. "It's a long story." Zeratul crossed his legs and brought his hands together on his lap so that the fingertips on one hand lightly touched those on the other.

He gazed down and searched for the proper terms to begin his story.

Zuz and Eya walked over and sat down in front of Zeratul on his right. They both starred at him and waited for him to speak up.

Finally, Zeratul looked up, and said, " Firstly, I am not really a scholar."

"I'd figured so." Eya smiled, tilting his head slightly.

Then Zeratul continued, " So you know, that there were reasons other than simple curiosity for my interest in something like the Derelict."

For the next half hour, Zeratul recounted the early history of the Protoss: how the Xel'Naga guided the Protoss into an advanced civilization; how the latter drove the Ancient Ones off of Aiur and warred amongst themselves during the Aeon of Strife; how the sage Khas preached Khala, the Path of Ascension, and united the Protoss tribes and how those who refused to adhere to the tenets of Khala were banished from Aiur and became the Dark Templar.

Then he explained the mystical concepts in Protoss culture, as well as the source of the Protosss' psionic powers.

"We Dark Templar sever ourselves from the Link by cutting off our nerve cords." Zeratul pointed behind his head. "Thus we were forced to draw upon an alternative source of psionic energy, which we termed the Void, and which turned out to be an opposing force to that of the Light familiar to practitioners of the Khala. Recently, as my nerve cords started to regrow, I was experiencing the Light again, bit by bit. Then I had a vision of Khas, and it came back to me all at once."

Urte and Eya nodded slowly, trying to digest what Zeratul said. Zuz looked like he was in deep thought.

Then after a brief moment, Zeratul went on to talk about the origins of the Zerg as well as recent events that befell the Protoss before the latter fled to Shaquras : how the Xel'Naga created the Zerg to be the opposite of what the Protoss were, and planned to combine both into a perfect species; how the Zerg invaded and infested the Human colonies, forcing the Protoss executor Tassadar to burn up the surfaces of those planets in a fruitless attempt to exterminate the Zerg, how Tassadar discovered that the Cerebrates wielded the energies of the Void, and thus only those who wielded the same energies could destroy them; how the Protoss Conclave wronged him for allying with "heretics"- the Dark Templar; how the Overmind learned of Aiur's secret location and razed it, attempting to assimilate the Protoss into the Zerg and finally how Tassadar sacrificed himself to destroy the Overmind.

When Zeratul finally finished his story Urte and Eya were left stunned and dazed, their mouths and mandibles hanging wide open.

After a while, Eya finally snapped out of his daze. "I'm really sorry about what happened to your homeworld."

And so did Urte. "Yes, me too. Don't blame yourself too much, you didn't expect that to happen." He put a hand gently on Zeratul's shoulder.

Zuz had remained in deep thought throughout the story. At the end, he looked up. "This is interesting. Do you suppose that the Hybrid that resisted your attack, as well the brood of Kainde Amedha that seems to follow it, has similar designs on the Yautja as the Zerg did on your species ?"

Zeratul nodded. " I suppose they do. As you would all have guessed, the reason that I was interested in the Derelict, was that I saw a compelling connection between the Xel'Naga and your legends of the Divine Ones. Exploring the Derelict would confirm that connection, which it did."

"Wow." Urte muttered, still taken aback by how incredible everything sounded. " So this spaceship has 'Creator Race' written all over it."

"The interior design of this ship is almost identical to that of certain relicts left behind by the Xel'Naga."Zeratul said, pointing to the ground. "Further, even though it is a million years old, it is possible that it was used for other purposes, serving as labs for the Xel'Nagas' earlier experiments, before having parts of it modified into Kainde Amedha hatcheries."

Eya pondered on the implications of what Zeratul had said, out loud. "So assuming that the Divine Ones, or the Xel'Naga, followed the same pattern as they did in your … home sector, they would have created the Kainde Amedha to be opposites of what the Yautja are too."

Zeratul smiled and nodded. "Yes, except that in this case, it seems, that the Divine Ones created the Kainde Amedha early on, propably to serve as a biological weapon against your ancestors should your ancestors rebel against them, or vice versa."

"Which they did, early on, as they somehow learnt about the Hybrid experiment, and feared that they would become redundant and so be eliminated once the experiments were finished. Even as vicious as the Kainde Amedha were, they were not really well- designed for genocide, so our ancestors managed to prevail through the ensuing battle, and the Hybrid was never awakened, until now ..." A wide grin spread across Eya's face as he began to realize what those vague parts of Yautja mythology were about.

"Yeah, now the Hybrid is somehow awakened and is on its way to eliminate us redundant species. Why didn't our great old ancestors just kill the thing ? " Urte sighed. He was catching up fairly well.

Zuz put a hand to his chin, maintaining that same expression of deep thought. "Perhaps they couldn't. After the creature was first awakened, many of our warriors tried to bring it down, but none of our weapons left so much as a scar on it. Blades, plasma missiles, fire, lasers, all had no real effect on it." Zuz paused for a while, putting his sentences together. "It seemed to be able to … regenerate from whatever insignificant damage we managed to inflict upon it. The speed at which its wounds healed was alarming. I suspect that even if we severed its limbs, it could regrow them in minutes."

"So we are doomed then." Urte raised both arms, let them drop to the floor, and sighed. " I enjoy hunting, but when we are up against a creature that can't be killed, that's a different matter altogether."

Zeratul closed his eyes and thought for a while, then said "We don't have to kill it. We just have to make sure that it will never pose a threat to anyone again."

"And how would you do that ?" Zuz's expression finally changed from rumination to a mixture of delight and curiosity.

"We burn away its nervous system, all of it." Zeratul turned his right palm upwards, and a few blue sparks flashed, twisted and jumped between the tips of his fingers. "That is, if I can get close enough to it. For that, you would have to help me."

"We'd do everything we can."Zuz volunteered. "Though judging from the number of Kainde Amedha drones this Hybrid commands, once they realize that we are trying something funny on their Queen, they can easily overwhelm us before we reach her again, so whatever attack you plan to use, Zeratul, it had better be powerful enough to incapacitate her once and for all."

"I'll make sure of that." Zeratul reassured him. Then he recalled something, and looked up at Eya.

"Do you remember telling me that according to legend, the Yautja used to have some 'incredible' abilities that have somehow been lost ?"

Eya nodded, "Yes, do you suppose that it is related to your species' temporary loss of the … Link during that Aeon of Strife you mentioned ?"

"You can say that." Zeratul said, a subtle grin now appearing on his mouthless face as he fished out a half-metre long crystal from a pocket on the front of his tightsuit. "The main point though, is that I think I can help you all regain those abilities."

* * *

( Wow, this fanfic is getting longer than I expected. 

I'm kinda rushing through this so the descriptions will tend to get less thorough or consistent, but I'll try to prevent that.

Thanks for following the story so far and please write in a review/suggestion !

- Starspawn07 )


	10. The Fantastic Four

**Chapter 9: The Fantastic Four**

"You can't be serious !" Eya's eyes widened in disbelief.

"I am serious." Zeratul held out the Khaydarin-Argus crystal in front of him. "Touch this, then relax. Whatever you experience, do not resist."

Zuz, Urte and Eya complied. The moment their fingertips made contact with the surface of the crystal, a flood of images rushed through their minds.

Zeratul closed his eyes and reached out telepathically to the three Yautja standing before him, one by one.

……

The sound of loud bumping and scratching woke them up from their trance.

Urte shook his head and glanced around at the others, then gasped.

Zuz and Eya had not changed at all, except now there was a lime green glow in their pupils.

"Same with your eyes." Zuz said.

"You can hear my thoughts ?" Urte exclaimed, astonished.

"You can all hear each other's thoughts." Zeratul explained.

"So I guess the ritual, or whatever it was, was a success ?"Eya asked.

Zeratul was about to answer when they heard the bumping and scratching noise again, this time clearer and more frequent.

The four of them looked to one side towards the source of the noise. It came from outside the doorway.

"Seems they haven't given up." Zuz reminded the other three of the situation they were in. "They probably realized that since we are now in the middle of space, they cannot go round the exterior of the Derelict and break in through the window, so they are going to keep attacking the door until it breaks. I wonder how long it is going to hold them out."

"No matter. We do not have to hide behind this door. Can you unlock it ?" Zeratul put the Khaydarin-Argus crystal back into his pocket, then walked over and stood three metres in front of the doorway.

"Are you sure ?"Zuz asked as he put on his helmet. Urte and Eya did the same.

"Yes, I am sure." A ball of blue mist condensed out of the air and swirled around in the palm of each of Zeratul's hands. A bright white core coalesced in the centre of each energy ball. Zeratul's eyes also began to glow more intensely.

Zuz ran over to the right side of the doorway, punched a few tiny bumps situated in a cluster in the middle of the wall, then quickly leaned away from the door.

Zeratul raised his arms to chest level and clapped his hands together as the door spread open to reveal a crowd of Xenomorphs drones outside, growling and screeching fiercely at Zeratul, and poking their black heads into the room once the door opened enough to let them in.

Then the room was lit up by a flash of bright blue light as thick bluish white bolts of lightning streaked out from between Zeratul's hands to strike the creatures in front of him with a loud, distinct crackle which sounded like metal and wooden sheets being violently smashed against each other.

The Xenomorphs were instantly thrown backwards, screeching in shock and frustration as they flew back outside.

The Hybrid Queen looked up from the mass of prongs, tubercles and knobs in front of her, and saw several drones falling off the platform at the upper end of the telescope at once, amidst a thin cloud of steam and tiny blue sparks streaming across their bodies.

Then the figure of the First-Born emerged on top of the upper end of the telescope, now with a blue glow in his eyes rather than an orange one, and raised both of his arms. A translucent sphere of pale blue light seemed to expand between his hands.

The next moment, the Hall was illuminated by several glaring and confusing flashes of blue light as bright blue bolts of lightning burst out from the surrounding wall, the floor and even the telescope, contorting, crackling and striking random targets within the Hall.

A large proportion of the Xenomorph drones, scattered here and there across the Hall, exploded as they were hit by the blue lightning, splashing their pale-green blood and shredded, smouldering body parts in every direction.

One bolt dashed up from the floor and struck the Queen's massive, clawed right hand, shattering it in an instant.

_Impressive, but you are only prolonging the inevitable, _she sneered telepathically as pale green tendrils extended out from her wrist and gradually molded and twisted themselves into the shape of a new hand. Then its surface turned black, and it now looked as if nothing ever happened to the Queen's hand.

I am going to enjoy doing this, Zeratul thought gleefully as he lowered his arms and surveyed the damage he caused. He had seen Tassadar use the Psionic Storm before, but only when he was standing directly in front of its area of effect now could he fully appreciate the sheer scope and ferocity of the mass destruction techniques used by the High Templar.

"Zuz, please keep the rest of the drones occupied while I engage their Queen. Try to stay alive as well." Zeratul whispered telepathically to the elder Yautja standing behind him on the platform below.

Then he looked down, and saw the Hybrid Queen and three large Xenomorphs, each twice the size of a normal drone, crowded around the lower end of the telescope. They all looked up at him and growled. The overgrown Xenomorphs crouched low and tensed their muscles, ready to pounce up at the First-Born should he come too close to their Queen.

Zeratul tiptoed, and an invisible force slowly lifted him upwards into the air, until there was a metre-long distance between his toes and the top of the telescope. Then he leaned forwards, and started hovering down towards the Hybrid Queen with increasing speed, as if riding on an invisible ski. He ignited his warp blade. It appeared shorter and thicker than before, now a metre-long dagger resembling the bright blue flame of a gas torch rather than a two-metre long thread of light. It will have to do, Zeratul thought as he pointed the weapon in front of him.

Zuz, Urte and Eya were still standing flabbergasted at what just transpired right in front of their eyes. Then they realized that there was still a large group of Xenomorphs alive in the Hall, and those clinging on to the wall were slowly advancing towards the platform.

Then it was battle stations as the nearest five Xenomorphs leapt onto the platform.

Zuz leapt up and somersaulted backwards in the air, holding out both his arms diagonally to his side, wrist blades fully extended.

Two Xenomorphs flew past him from underneath. One had its head split open by Zuz's wrist blades, and crashed onto the middle of the platform before collapsing down, its limbs and tail flailing about aimlessly like those of a headless insect. The other avoided Zuz's weapon and landed at the edge of the platform.

Zuz landed to its right and quickly stabbed its shoulder repeatedly with his wrist-blades.

As the adrenaline kicked in, Zuz began to perceive everything in slow motion, as if they were all fighting underwater.

Out of the corner of his eye, Zuz saw the creature 'slowly' bringing its tail forward in an attempt to impale him with its tail spike. He dragged the wristblade on his left arm towards his left, and swung it down in a tight, diagonal arc. It cut through the base of the Xenomorph's tail spike, severing it from the creature's tail, and Zuz swerved his head to the right as the curved, spearhead shaped object spun its way harmlessly past his left shoulder, beads of pale green fluid trailing behind it.

Then Zuz saw a Xenomorph 'slowly' pouncing onto him from his left. He turned round to face it, knelt, and raised his right arm, driving his other wristblade upwards right into its throat.

To an outside observer of course, it seemed as if Zuz stabbed a Xenomorph to death, sliced off its tail-spike, and spun around, killing another Xenomorph, all in one swift motion.

Urte held his fully extended combi-stick by one end and swung it in a wide arc at the two Xenomorphs leaping towards him. There was a loud, sickening -pop- and -crack- as the far end of the pole hit the ribcage of one of the creatures from its right and sent it flying backwards across the Hall, smashing it flat against the wall. While Urte blinked, surprise at what he just did, the other Xenomorph took the chance to knock Urte over onto his back, and Urte tried to hold it off with his combi-stick, pressing the middle of the pole into the creature's throat.

The Xenomoph opened its mouth and shot its inner jaws forwards at Urte's neck. Urte swerved his upper body to his left to avoid it, but it managed to hit his right shoulder cap, punching a hole in his armour, and sending jolts of pain shooting through his shoulder. Fluorescent, deep green blood spilled onto the floor beside him.

Ignoring the pain, Urte bent both his legs and kicked forward as hard as he could. The Xenomorph flew up and backwards in a four-metre high projectile path, its limbs and tail trailing in front of it, and then down onto the floor below.

Urte stood up and checked the wound on his right shoulder. It appeared smaller than he expected. In fact, it was closing itself right in front of his eyes, shrinking from a deep tear in the flesh and skin into just a tear in the skin. Urte gently rotated his shoulder to put his shoulder cap back in place, then spun his combi-stick around in a stylish fashion and charged at another Xenomorph that had just jumped onto the platform.

Eya fired several rounds with his gun and plasma cannon and grinned as all of the projectiles made their mark, each hitting a nearby Xenomorph in the chest or head. It was as if he had calculated precisely the required trajectory of each projectile within miliseconds and fired accordingly, hitting his targets with pin-point accuracy even though the latter were constantly moving. He dashed forwards across the platform and jumped onto the top of the telescope, then turned around and started shooting at the Xenomorphs crawling down from the wall around the platform and doorway.

The Praetorian Xenomorph standing on the Queen's right lunged forwards as Zeratul flew down towards the Queen. Just before it was about to catch Zeratul with its claws, Zeratul stamped his right foot down at the telescope, and somersaulted three metres into the air, pointing his warp-blade away from him with both hands outstretched. The weapon made a deep gash along the Praetorian's head as Zeratul flew over it. It roared loudly and flailed its arms blindly above its head trying to catch Zeratul again, then collapsed onto the floor.

As Zeratul was still in mid-air, the Queen smacked at him with her enormous left hand, felt a sudden electric shock, then quickly withdrew it, hissing and growling in irritation as steam arose from her claws. The impact was absorbed by Zeratul's plasma shield, but he was still sent tumbling through the air away from the centre of the Hall.

Zeratul slowed and steadied himself down just before he hit the wall, maintaining a hovering height of one metre above the ground. Then he turned in the direction of the Queen and saw the two other two Praetorians slowly approaching him on two legs. They had the frilled head-shields and large fangs of normal Xenomorph Queens, and they reared up to make their already imposing stature even more frightening.

Zeratul stared at the two overgrown Xenomorphs and concentrated hard.

Suddenly, there was a flash of dim blue light, and two Praetorians materialized out of thin air in front of Zeratul. Their skin had an iridescent, dark blue tinge to it. They were facing and striking a threatening pose at the two original Praetorians. Jerking their heads backwards in surprise, the latter lunged forward and tried to seize their illusory doubles with their claws. The Hallucinated Praetorians nimbly dodged the attacks but did not retaliate.

Having kept the Queen's guards occupied, Zeratul flew up over their heads, leaned forward and swooped down towards the Queen herself. He held out both hands in front of him and turned his palms towards each other. A half-metre wide pale, blue translucent sphere of light expanded between his hands.

Her view of Zeratul previously blocked by the dark blue mirror images of the Praetorians, the Hybrid Queen was caught off guard when Zeratul charged at her from the air.

Before she could turn around, Zeratul had already pushed the pale blue energy ball into her right side.

She shuddered violently as a painful shocking sensation shot through her body, followed by a numbness, then collapsed onto the floor as Zeratul's Psi Assault burnt away all the nerves in her middle body.

_Ah, I underestimated you. You look weak, but you are full of surprises, just like the Oomans._

"Humans ? What happened to the humans ? How are they involved in all this ?"Zeratul shouted telepathically. He recalled his meeting with Duran, and suddenly felt that he was missing a big part of the whole scheme of things.

_They are an enigma really …_ The Queen slowly and silently curled her tail around Zeratul, pointing her tail-spike at Zeratul's back.

_They were here, and there, before I was awakened… they were killed off … just as we shall kill you now._

Zeratul leapt up just as the metre-long slender spear-head shaped weapon was pushed into his previous position from behind him. Sparks flew off its surface as it grazed the bottom of his plasma shield. Zeratul staggered a while in the air, drifting about randomly from the impact delivered by the Queen's tail-spike.

Damn, he thought, her nerves were regenerated this fast.

Zeratul stopped drifting and landed steadily onto the floor. Then he looked up just in time to see the Queen spread her mandibles and spit out a stream, almost a torrent, of a thin, pale green liquid towards him.

The acid steamed, fizzled and splashed backwards as it was blocked by Zeratul's plasma shield. Some of it trickled through and made some streak-like burn marks on Zeratul's face and hands. He winced in irritation.

When the acid and steam cleared, he saw the gargantuan form of the Hybrid Queen looming over him like a praying mantis looking down at an aphid. He immediately flew backwards several metres. Instinctively, he clutched his warp blade in his right hand and gathered his psionic energies into that hand. Ignited, the blade extended a full two metres into the air. Its bright white core thinned but glowed with higher intensity. Its surface turned brilliant blue, and thin sparks ran up the length of the blade.

The Queen roared and threw her heavy body forwards in rage, as if to crush Zeratul with her weight alone.

Zeratul continued to fly backwards until he felt a wide, hard surface press up against the back of his plasma shield, and he immediately kicked down hard at the floor with both legs, turning sharply upwards.

Then there was a reverberating thud as the charging Queen crashed headfirst into the wall, and a sickening crunch as the rest of her body collapsed and twisted forward from the momentum.

Zeratul, now hovering up the wall a few metres above the Hybrid Queen's head, bent his legs, stretched out both arms below him, pointing his warp-blade downwards, and allowed himself to fall straight down.

The Queen let out an ear-piercing, metallic screech as the two-metre long blade of pure energy was plunged down right through her head from above, and the energies it radiated began to burn up her brain.

She jerked in violent spasms, pale blue flames flaring out from inside her mouth.

_I cannot be killed, I am perfect ! _She screamed telepathically, then her psionic emanations faded away as she collapsed in a heap onto the floor.

Zeratul climbed down the left side of the Queen's head, then bent over slightly in exhaustion. The blue glow in his eyes dimmed. His warp blade thinned and faded out. Again, he had used up most of his energy. He took a few steps back and stared at the black, now completely motionless form of the Queen. Good, he thought, I did it.

And that was when he heard a low hissing sound coming from above and behind him.

Zeratul turned around slowly to face the two Praetorians now standing just three metres away from him, each looking down at him with its menacing grin on its face.

While concentrating all his energies on the Queen, he was unable to maintain the illusions he used to draw the Praetorians away. Right now, he was too weak to attempt a psi assault or a "whirlwind slash" with his warp blade.

Matriarch, Tassadar, Fenix … here I come, he thought as he closed his eyes to await the inevitable end …

… which did not happen.

He heard a -whoosh- and the sound of several large knifes slicing through tough leather.

He opened his eyes in time to see the two creatures before him collapse onto the floor, roaring in agony. There were several deep gashes on their legs and bellies.

Then from somewhere on the left a four metre long black spear was thrust into the side of one of the Praetorians' neck. It went right through and impaled the other Praetorian in the head.

Zeratul blinked in confusion, then turned to his left with a start to see Zuz, Urte, Eya standing beside him.

"Thank you." Zeratul said meekly.

"You are welcome. Without your help, we wouldn't have stood a chance against this whole brood of Kainde Amedha in the first place." Zuz then looked over his shoulder. "The Hybrid, is it dead ?"

"No."Zeratul turned around. "In that last strike I completely destroyed her brain and nervous system. I also made sure that all her essence had been dissipated. She might regenerate herself, eventually, but I doubt she would still be anywhere near as powerful as she used to be."

Eya shrugged and sighed. "Now that leaves us with our other problem. We are still trapped inside the Derelict and we have no idea where it's ."

At this, Zeratul smiled."Well, if our conjecture about the Hybrid's intentions were correct, then there could only be one place that this ship is heading for."

"And besides, we could spend the next few days scouring this ship of any more Kainde Amedha infestations !" Urte blurted out, then fell silent as he realized that he was sounding obviously too overexcited about the hunts to come.

The other three looked at him for a moment, then all four broke out into a bout of boisterous, hearty laughter.


	11. Epilogue

**Epilogue:**

"… Finally, we discovered the last batch of Kainde Amedha eggs hidden in a large room at the end of the corridor, guarded by a few drones, and Zeratul fried them all with his … lightning thing, leaving only one egg, which we froze and placed inside a small pod we found on the ship." Urte finished his story, grabbed the half-filled cup of C'ntlip on the round glass table and drank it all up in one gulp.

"It's called a Psionic Storm." Zeratul reminded him, for the fifth time.

Shaking his head gently and smiling to himself, he sank comfortably into his sofa and looked around at the other people seated around the table.

They were lounging in Eya's living room, like it was when Zeratul first met the young Yautja scientist, only now there were two more sofas facing the table. Seated on one of them, to Zeratul's left, was Zuz, wearing nothing but a pair of brown trousers. In the other sofa there sat another old, grey-skinned Yautja wearing dull white robes, and a prosthetic left leg.

"Hmm. So I did miss out on a lot of things." Kurh sighed. "There was a big hoo-ha in the hospital, you know. A big grey alien spaceship had landed ! they said. And then it turned out to be you guys piloting the Derelict. I think the other scientists couldn't speak for days after they saw you walk out of the ship. And I think some of the younger ones fainted when they saw your, eh, bird-legged friend. Haha …"

Zeratul gave Kurh a stern glare, then looked away chuckling to himself. It had been some weeks since the Derelict landed in the middle of the Yautja colony, and sparked a temporary Derelict-mania among its inhabitants. Several groups of Yautja scientists were now conducting intensive studies on everything they could find in the million-year old spaceship: the unconscious Hybrid, the exotic technologies and the Khaydarin-Argus crystals. Zeratul kept one for himself, the one he found at the top of the telescope.

Nothing much changed since then, except that Zeratul noticed a shallow deep-green scar on the left side of Urte's cheek. It resembled a slanted fern frond with five branches. There was a similar scar on Eya's cheek as well.

The Blood mark, he recalled. It was suggested that Zeratul receive the mark as well. He accepted it, though not on his cheek, but on the back of his left hand.

"So, Zeratul, do you intend to stay with us, or are you going to continue being a 'wandering scholar' ?"Eya asked.

"Not sure." Zeratul replied.

He would like to stay with the Yautja, but some parts of the Hybrid Mystery were still unresolved. He still had no idea exactly what role the humans played in it. There was also the question of Duran's true identity, and what would happen if the Protoss-Zerg Hybrids were awakened.

He was also beginning to miss his brethren. He wondered how the new Protoss Alliance was doing in his absence.

For the moment though, he was quite content with the one recent achievement he made. He was able to call upon energies of the Light, a first among dark templar. Praise be to Khas, and Adun. The way those energies were manipulated was similar to the Void, but the feel and effects were vastly different. The Void froze, while the Light boiled. The Void spread, while the Light concentrated.

And now he had both, though it would still be some time before he could wield them in tandem with each other, like Tassadar could.

The sure thing was, he was no longer just a dark templar, or a high templar, but both.

From now on he would call himself …

the Grey Templar.

THE END

…

_Self-trust, neither strength nor force in hand,_

_Harmony and Balance comes naturally in the heart._

_Take adversity smoothly,_

_See richness in emptiness and hollows._

_Rise above, transform rage and violence,_

_Where the route ends, Heaven's will shows itself._

_Motion to stillness, division to multiplication._

_Enter the World with destiny, and exit due to the Winds,_

_To be emotionless is to have feeling. _

_Follow destiny and characteristics, neither striving nor winning._

_Having no emotions, is the same as having feelings._

- short modified version of the theme song of _The Tai Chi Master_ (1993) starring Jet Li

( dunno, just felt like quoting it here … )

**Afterword**

Phew ! At last, we have come to the end of the first story. Now I can move on to other things, and leave the sequels to other, more capable writers.

Sorry if this appeared rushed. You rarely come across a time when you are in the mood to write fan fiction for several consecutive days, so when I do, I make sure that I finish the story quickly.

Some things you may or may not have noticed:

None of the protagonists were females. That was really unintentional. There were no gender-specific/ romantic themes in the story anyway, so it wouldn't matter whether the main characters were male or female. Any sexual innuendos, if there were, were entirely H.R.Giger's fault, not mine. K, just kidding …

The Derelict was based on the abandoned alien spaceship of the same name which was encountered by the crew of the Nostromo in Alien.

The whole "Yautja mythology" thing was made-up. It is NOT part of the Alien/ Predator cannon.

I am not a native English speaker, so what you just read was the combined result of a British-style education, limited vocabulary and slight exposure to slangs. 

…

Thanks for reading and have a nice day ;)

- Starspawn07


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